path: root/49693-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49693 ***

                        THE MACHINE THAT FLOATS

                            _By Joe Gibson_

                    _Illustrated by H. W. McCauley_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds March
1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]




    _What if you invented a space ship? Would you give it to the world?
    And what if you decide NOT to! Are you a criminal to be hunted down?_


Bill Morrow fished his cigarettes out, shook one loose, and poked it
between his lips. He lighted it with hands that shook badly, he leaned
back on the workbench and blew smoke in a long, heavy sigh.

His gaze remained fixed on the compact little chunk of glittering
grids, coils, and metal loops that floated in the center of the room.
Floated, by Isaac Newton--_floated!_

It worked. It worked beautifully! He'd merely inserted the four
dry-cell flashlight batteries into their clamps and thumbed the switch
on the little face-panel. The tiny pilot-light winked on, the needle
jiggled on the single instrument dial--

And it worked. It had risen gently from the workbench, floating into
the air....

Then, seemingly, it had fostered a dislike for the workbench. It slid
off and bounced toward the floor--bounced, up and down in the air,
gently--and floated on across the cellar toward the oil furnace in the
corner.

But as it approached the oil furnace, it had decided it didn't like
that either--so it deflected its course and floated toward the concrete
cellar wall.

But it didn't like the wall. So it reversed its course and retreated to
the center of the room. There it hovered, four feet above the cement
floor, four feet below the rafters of the cellar roof.

It hovered in mid-air.

Morrow stared at it, critically. He could capture it--get it between
himself and the wall, and reach out and grab it before it could slip
away--and touching it wouldn't harm him. The magneto-gravitic coils
didn't need high voltage.

It was working on its lowest "volume" setting. The only word applicable
was "volume" because he used an ordinary volume-control grid and knob
to adjust its power--and, again, "power" was the only applicable word.
He might have to invent a few new words for it.

But on its lowest volume setting, it was supporting its own
weight--suspending itself in the Earth's gravitic field.

And since gravitic forces were also magnetic forces, he would weigh a
fraction of a pound lighter when he grabbed hold of the mechanism--just
he, himself, since he wore rubber-soled shoes. If he turned up its
volume, it would exert greater influence on the molecular structure
of itself and of his body--and perhaps of a few grains of dust on
the cement floor beneath his feet--by simple mass-attraction and
conductivity.

Of course, "mass-attraction" and "conductivity" were also obsolete
terms--except that they described two different results of the
same natural phenomenon. The floating mechanism affected the basic
phenomenon itself--

And [equation] was the closest Einstein could come to explaining that!

Still, a word could be invented for it, Morrow supposed. Not that he
understood what the new word was supposed to define--but then, had
Edison known what electricity was? No! He had merely experimented and
learned what it would do, and then designed mechanisms which would
utilize it.

Morrow didn't know what "gravity and magnetic moment" was, either--nor
"angular momentum"--but he had discovered what it would do. _It_, not
they--it was all the same thing. And he designed a mechanism. And the
mechanism worked.

It defied "gravity."

With its volume turned up, it could very probably lift him to any
height above the Earth he desired, with its ability growing weaker only
as it rose out of the Earth's gravity and magnetic field. And it would
keep him suspended, if he desired, until its batteries burned out.

There would be limitations, of course. Perhaps the Earth's gravity and
magnetic fields would be too weak at, say, an altitude of fifty miles
for the mechanism to function. There were probably limits to the mass
and weight it could lift. There would have to be extensive tests--

And a cellar workshop was no place to conduct them!

       *       *       *       *       *

He straightened up from the workbench and moved forward on the balls of
his feet. He spread his arms wide as he approached the mechanism, like
a basketball player approaching a wary opponent who had the ball. Smoke
from the cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth streamed up
and stung his eye. He wished he had left it back on the workbench.

At first, the little mechanism ignored him. Then, almost instinctively,
it seemed to notice him. It went sliding away from him, toward the wall.

Morrow moved forward, cautiously.

It glided close to the wall, then rebounded gently. It came drifting
back toward him--then hesitated, started off in a tangent--and he
grabbed for it. A faint, tingling shock went up his arm as he clawed at
the shiny metal loops, but that was all. He hung on grimly as it tugged
at his fingertips; then, as its influence swept through him and attuned
his body to it, it snuggled up to him, suddenly friendly.

He snapped it off and felt its inert weight settle down familiarly in
his hands. He carried it back to the workbench, set it down, and threw
a rag over it.

Then he pulled off his coveralls, went upstairs to the kitchenette, and
washed his hands.

There were other factors to consider, of course. Especially the ones he
didn't want to think about--the frightening ones--

He stared down at his hands, feeling the cool water run pleasantly
over them. Strong, supple hands. Well-proportioned, muscular. A
little bit like the rest of him. Not fat or skinny, not soft-muscled
nor, again, as bulgingly muscular as a wrestler. Just firm flesh,
strong and not too much of it, on a strong-boned skeleton frame.
Nerves well-coordinated, reflexes good. But tired. Mentally fatigued,
the psycho-therapists said, from living in a world of raw tensions.
According to them, ninety percent of the American public suffered
mental fatigue. There had been a slew of magazine articles and several
books about it.

The Cold War, the war that wasn't a war. The Russkies.

Morrow turned off the cold-water tap and glanced at his image in the
shaving mirror. A slender face, a good nose, a firm mouth with slightly
too much jaw. Dark hair tumbled in comfortable looseness over a lined
forehead. Gray eyes that mocked him as he mocked himself.

He dried his hands and got a couple of cans of beer out of the
refrigerator. Grabbing a can-opener and a glass, he strolled in through
the small, dark bedroom to the front living room and sprawled himself
out in the deep chair beside the television set. It was a small home,
a comfortable home, and he enjoyed prowling around in it in his socks,
loafers, and shorts. He scratched his left leg and opened a can of beer.

He was, Morrow concluded, the product of an age of terror. East was
Russia and west was the Allied Nations, and in between was a veritable
No Man's Land. Radar blanketed the skies, rocket missiles stood on
their firing-racks, long-range bombers waited to deliver atomic death
and swift jet-fighters waited to do battle with them. The diplomats
called it a balance of power; the military strategists, a balance
of forces, wherein neither side could launch an atomic war without
suffering complete annihilation by the other.

And so, said the statesmen, there would be no atomic war.

The only trouble was, they couldn't convince the people. Too many
self-minded individuals saw the world situation as two sticks of
dynamite rubbing against each other. At any moment, both might explode.
Massive war industry and compulsory military training for their
youngsters didn't make the public feel any more secure.

Nor, of course, did the generals want them to feel secure. The Allied
generals moved their armies in threatening maneuvers near critical
borders to increase the fear of the peoples in communist-dominated
countries; the Russian generals did likewise to increase the fear of
people in the Allied Nations. And the diplomats hurled threats back and
forth in the United Nations' assemblies to achieve the same purpose.

Militarily, the two sides had reached a stalemate. The final weapon was
the people. Each side hoped the people of the other side would rise up
in revolt, thus breaking the deadlock and winning the struggle, but
humanity is notoriously stubborn. It was, nonetheless, rather hard on
the people.

Individual lives were deeply affected, sometimes for better and
sometimes for worse.

Morrow's life had, so far, been for the better. In high school,
certain aptitude tests had placed him in advance physics classes; upon
graduation, at seventeen, he had spent a year in a government-sponsored
engineering school. At eighteen, further tests had placed him in the
Air Force, assigned as radar-operator to the rear cockpit of a sleek,
all-weather jet-fighter. He spent two years patrolling the stratosphere
over the vast, white expanse of the Arctic Ocean. At twenty, he
was reassigned to engineering school and spent four years studying
electronics, during which time he was returned to civilian status. He
was placed at Western Electronics as a production engineer; by the time
he was twenty-seven, he had worked his way up to the Research Division.
His flying experience helped considerably, but it wasn't all. He was
deeply in love with electronics. He had studied Einstein's equations,
for example, and got something out of them that most of the others
missed. No one knew exactly what it was--neither did Morrow--but he
began to have "hunches" that often paid off.

In electronics, that was a priceless faculty. A great deal of it,
especially in the research department, was still pretty much of a
hit-or-miss affair. There still wasn't a man who knew _exactly_ what
electricity was!

Now, at twenty-nine, he had gotten another of those "hunches." It
worked, too! The machine floated!

       *       *       *       *       *

He gazed thoughtfully out the broad picture window at the stretch of
green lawn, the sidewalks, the trees along the street and the other
little prefab houses of his neighbors. The evening shadows were cool
and deepening as night approached. Warm, yellow light poured from the
windows across the street.

He was comfortable here in his little, company-owned bachelor's home.
Most of the town of Westerton was owned by Western Electronics,
with its huge, sprawling plant buildings on the other side of the
small valley, across the railroad tracks. Like most of the bachelor
engineers, he ate most of his meals over at the company cafeteria. A
cleaning-woman came twice a week to tidy up his little house, though he
was a fairly conscientious housekeeper himself.

And like practically all the engineers, he had a small workshop patched
together in his cellar, built from odds and ends salvaged from the
company's junk-pile of rejected parts, a few pieces scrounged from
the laboratories, and some odd bits made in the machine-shop over the
protests of its foreman. There were nine amateur radio-hams sharing the
wave-bands in Westerton and vicinity, and no office-clerk's housewife
ever had any difficulty getting a recalcitrant dishwasher or electric
iron fixed.

It was here, in his private workshop, that he had developed his
"hunch" to startling reality. Working in his spare time, figuring
out its mathematical components, then working those components into
theoretical diagrams, then designing and building the machine to fit
the diagrams--and it worked!

Also, it was fantastic. It had been a little too fantastic for him to
mention it to any of the others at the labs. His fellow-engineers--some
of whom were considerably older than he was--were a little too staid
for that. They, too, were products of the age; their entire efforts
and, indeed, most of their interests were tied up in the one, basic
problem of making better electronic devices for better weapons for the
Armed Forces. They couldn't be blamed for that, the world situation
being what it was, but it did make them somewhat hide-bound.

The idea of controlling the pull of gravity was a little too fanciful
for them, Morrow feared--or if they had any interest in the idea at
all, it would be in the possible uses of it as a military weapon. That
was the way to get ahead as a scientist, these days!

Morrow shuddered involuntarily.

_There_ was the thing he actually feared!

He drew it into his thoughts, slowly, and analysed it. Item: he had
discovered a means of controlling gravity. Item: he had developed a
mechanism which worked on that principle. Addenda: the mechanism could
lift a human being, quite possibly as much mass as a heavy tank, and it
might even open the way to interplanetary travel.

Quite obviously, it had terrific potentialities as a weapon of war.

And it was his patriotic duty, as a citizen of the United States, to
turn his discovery over to the authorities.

Well, suppose he did? It would come as an even greater shock than was
the development of the atomic bomb--of that, he was sure. It would
become a top-secret project. Gradually, each individual unit of the
entire Armed Forces would be made airborne. The Infantry would take to
the skies, supported by airborne artillery and tanks; the Air Force
and Navy would combine to send giant battleships gliding through
the stratosphere, unhindered by any shore-line and capable of both
artillery fire and aerial bombardment.

How could anything as big as that be kept secret? The answer was, it
couldn't. Such a program would hardly have begun when some Russian
agent handed the entire secret over to his bosses in the Kremlin. Then
Russia would launch the same sort of program.

And world tension was already terrific. Mankind was already teetering
on the brink of atomic war. What psychological effect would this new
threat have on them? What insults would the diplomats think of, then?
What charges and counter-charges would hurl between them? What final
"incident" would spark the entire civilization into a raging holocaust?

Or would the officials in Washington realize that outcome? Would they
order his discovery destroyed, forgotten, and himself assigned to some
well-guarded hunting lodge in the Canadian Northwest where he could be
kept in comfortable isolation, with no one around to pluck the dreadful
secret from his mind?

The present balance of power had at least some promise of averting an
atomic war. His discovery would destroy that balance of power, and do
it suddenly, frighteningly. Someone might get just scared enough to
start shooting. After that, there'd be no turning back. There would be
atomic war.

They probably wouldn't want their balance of power destroyed. At least,
not _that_ way.

Well, then, why shouldn't he save them--and himself--a lot of trouble
and simply destroy the thing himself? Forget about it, forget he'd ever
thought of it?

That wasn't so good, either.

Personally, he was deeply anxious to begin the tests on the mechanism.
There was so little he knew, actually, about what its limitations were,
how they could be surmounted--

But there was more to it than that.

The mechanism did work, and it would lift considerable weight.
Therefore, it would certainly have its uses.

Air travel could be made perfectly safe. That fact prompted a vision
into his mind of everybody flying around in little, teardrop plexiglass
shells, landing on their roofs--and living in homes scattered over a
peaceful countryside. Cities could be smaller, devoted exclusively
to office-buildings and industrial plants, and would suffer less
congestion.

Also, people would become accustomed to travelling greater distances. A
thousand miles might be a comfortable afternoon's ride. This, in turn,
would mean greater travelling and exchange between various nations.

Then, there was the fact that commercial shipping would be
revolutionized. Transporting air cargoes would be cheap and dependable,
even for the heaviest kinds of freight. Thus, factories could be built
near their power or raw material sources. They wouldn't have to be
built near large railroad centers or harbors; commercial shipping would
no longer be a problem. And thus, industrial areas could spread out,
become less congested, have better surroundings for employee-morale and
pay less property taxes.

Also, they would be able to ship their products to more distant
markets. International trade would increase tremendously. The
world-wide competition would shatter unfair national cartels--that
would take time, and many governments would fight it, but eventually
they'd have to accept it or intensive smuggling would undermine their
economy. In times of economic stress, black markets were often a
blessing to backward, underdeveloped areas.

The whole result of it would be that the entire world would be bound
together far more closely. Economic ties would be predominantly
international. The increased flow of travellers between nations
would gradually break down prejudices and differences of custom and
misunderstanding.

And that would create a far stronger basis for tomorrow's world
government. As civilization stood, it needed a world government
desperately. Either that, or atomic energy would destroy it. Either
world government or war.

_So there it is!_ Morrow concluded.

He had a mechanism for controlling the pull of gravity.

Either that mechanism was destroyed and forgotten, or the world's
present balance of power would be destroyed and humanity plunged into
atomic war.

But if the mechanism was destroyed, humanity wouldn't have it for the
future development of world government and civilization. And they
needed it. The present automobiles, trains, and aircraft were all very
streamlined and marvelous when compared to the horse and buggy, but
they were still too limited, too cumbersome and too costly. There had
to be something for the average man, earning the average salary, that
would haul him--and extend his interests--to the far corners of the
world.

The mechanism would do that.

Mankind would need it to develop a sound, productive future.

But if it wasn't destroyed, there would be atomic war. There wouldn't
be any future!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was after midnight when he rose from his chair, pulled on a pair
of slacks and a sweater, and left the house. He locked the front door
and walked around to the garage. Swinging the door back, he felt his
way into the darkness, touched the familiar surfaces of his little
motor-bike, and rolled it out to the drive-way. Mounting, he kicked the
starter, and the little one-cylinder, 15 horsepower engine exploded
into a throaty chatter.

He rode down the dark, tree-lined streets, the cool air whipping over
his body. Swinging into Railroad Avenue, he pulled over to the curb and
stopped before the lighted windows of the telegraph office. He strode
in, scribbled off a telegram, and paid for it.

The office girl, counting the words, stopped and frowned. She shoved
it back across the counter to him. "Does that make sense?" she asked
dubiously.

Morrow glanced over it again and smiled. It read:

    WESTERTON, NEW JERSEY
    August 6, 1960

    D. P. SMITH
    ACME CROP DUSTERS INC.
    DENVER, COLORADO

    SCRAMBLE WESTERTON. WIRE E-T-A. MAY DAY.

    BILL MORROW

He shoved it back to her. "It makes sense, all right. And I'm expecting
a quick reply, so I'll be waiting across the street in Switzer's Cafe."

"It may take some time--"

"That reply will come as quickly as you people can handle it," Morrow
retorted. "A crop-dusting pilot is accustomed to getting telegrams in
the middle of the night--and answering them, before some other outfit
can grab the job being offered!"

The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. "All right, then. You'll be over
at Switzer's--"

"Right."

She scribbled a note on a memo pad. Morrow turned and strode out.

A feeling of elation tingled through him as he crossed the street.
Calling on D.P. Smith had been a natural reaction, once the plan had
begun forming in his mind. If he'd ever wanted anyone murdered, Smitty
was the one man he could trust!

But there was a more immediate cause for elation. It was after
midnight, and Gwyn went on shift at Switzer's Cafe at midnight. She'd
been on the dawn patrol for the past week, and the only time he'd seen
her was when he dropped in for a quick breakfast coffee every morning.

Gwyn Davidson was the only daughter of old Pat Davidson, the plant
superintendent at Western Electronics. Bill had worked under Pat as a
production engineer; he'd met Gwyn two months earlier when she returned
home from college. Gwyn's mother had died the year before from cancer,
after a lifetime of suffering and hospital bills. Old Pat was still
paying off those bills, and Gwyn had been working her own way through
school. Now, she was a waitress with an M.A. degree, helping out with
the expenses at home.

He saw her through the front window, leaning on the counter in the
deserted cafe, reading the comics in a newspaper. She was a small,
curvaceous girl in a blue waitress' uniform carefully chosen to fit to
her best advantage. Soft, dark hair tumbled back from a tanned, healthy
face that sported only a trace of lipstick.

Her wide, steady gaze flicked up as he strode in, then she smiled
warmly. "Hi, Bill. What're you doing up at this ungodly hour?" Pretty,
firm-fleshed, and bouncy.

_Even though her feet are killing her!_ Bill thought. "Hello, Gwyn," he
said. "I came down to send a telegram. Pour me some coffee, huh?" He
straddled a stool before her.

"I'll give you what we serve as coffee," she answered brightly, "but
you'll have to pay for it!"

"Fair warning. How's tricks?"

"Haven't seen her lately. What's with this telegram all of a sudden?"
She grabbed cup and saucer, turned, and drew a cupful from the chrome
coffee-maker.

"Invitation to an old friend," Bill replied half-truthfully. "All of a
sudden, I'm lonesome."

She swung back and slid the coffee before him. Her eyes were teasing.
"Wouldn't a wife do just as well?"

"A good question," he quipped back. "Come sit down and have coffee with
me, and we'll talk it over!"

"_What?_" She grinned brightly, wide-eyed. "Don't go 'way, now!"
She whirled, grabbed a cup and saucer, and filled it. "I'll be right
there!" She moved briskly around the end of the counter and perched
herself on the stool beside him. "Now! Tell me more!" She began ladling
spoon-fulls of sugar into her coffee.

It was a good comedy act, done with a natural flair for perfect timing.
Morrow leaned weakly on the counter, laughing silently.

Gwyn gave him a glare of feigned contempt. "Oh! Just another
fast-talker, huh? I might have known!" She stirred her coffee
furiously. "You engineers are all alike. If father warned me once--"

"Don't overdo it, honey," he cautioned her, lightly. "You know
perfectly well I've enjoyed those long goodnight kisses when I've
walked you home."

She sobered reflectively. "All right, Bill. But just what was this
mid-morning telegram about--or don't you want to tell me?"

It was a casually-spoken question, and the circumstances made it a
perfectly logical one. As a research engineer, Morrow worked on a
number of things which had top-secret classification, and Gwyn knew he
did.

_And I'd better classify this, too!_ Morrow thought slyly.

"Afraid I can't," he answered her, calmly.

She nodded and sipped her coffee in silence. Finally, she asked, "Will
you be glad when I'm back on a day-shift?"

Morrow took his turn sipping coffee and took his time forming an
answer. "I want to take you swimming out at the Lakeshore Lodge,
again," he said. "I still dream about the way you rolled up your
two-piece suit so it was a Bikini model--"

"Uh huh," she interrupted. Her tone was hardly enthusiastic. "If we do,
you'd better not try making the passes at me you did the last time!"

"You expect me to resist the temptation of all that beautiful skin?" he
retorted, grinning down at her.

She gave a pert shake of her head. "When I give in to a man, he'll be
my husband," she said firmly. "And he'll be my husband because he loves
me--not because he drools over my body!"

"Ummm," Morrow ummed, doubtfully. He decided it would be best to change
the subject. "Read the latest _Universe_?"

"Uh huh! What'd you think of Sturgeon's story?" She was at once bright,
smiling, interested. "Wasn't it wonderful? I mean, the way he so
perfectly defined an alien being's intelligence--"

       *       *       *       *       *

That was science-fiction. Gwyn read the science-fiction magazines
avidly, from cover to cover. Morrow read a few, along with his other
reading--the _Post_, _Harper's_, the _Digest_, and half a dozen
technical journals--and he'd even written and sold a science-fiction
story once. Nineteen editors rejected it, but the twentieth bought it
after having him revise it three times.

But that one mutual interest had gone a long way in winning his esteem
in Gwyn's mind, slight though it was. And she was cute as a bug, the
sort of female who set a man's blood a-tingle.

So they talked science-fiction. Alien creatures that inhabited other
planets, trips across space and out to the other stars, travels through
time and into other dimensions, civilizations which spread clear across
the galaxy....

It was over an hour before a young messenger boy came in with the
expected telegram. Morrow tipped the boy, excused himself to Gwyn, and
ripped open the envelope.

The message read:

    DENVER, COLORADO
    AUGUST 6 1960

    BILL MORROW
    WESTERTON, NEW JERSEY

    ROGER, WILCO. E-T-A NEWARK AIRPORT 3:10 A.M. SUNDAY AUG. 8TH. WHERE
    IN HELL IS WESTERTON?

    D.P. SMITH

Grinning, Morrow folded the yellow sheet and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Everything okay?" Gwyn asked, forcing all concern from her voice.

"Everything is okay," Morrow affirmed quietly. "How much do I owe you?"

"Four coffees? Forty-five cents."

He laid the change on the counter, then stooped and kissed her cheek
lightly. "I gotta go home and get some sleep," he murmured.

She smiled, a little wistfully. "Thanks for coming."

He went out into the cool darkness, then hurried down to the bar on the
corner and went in to use the men's room. Then he came out, crossed the
street, and climbed aboard his little motor-bike.

Thoughts drifted lazily through his mind as he chugged contentedly
homeward....

       *       *       *       *       *

Thoughts--and memories. They were cruising along peacefully at 40,000
feet. Morrow felt as if he were molded into the snug rear cockpit, an
integral part of the tons of sleek, deadly metal that was the old F-94
jet-fighter. But he'd experienced that feeling so often it no longer
mattered, then.

Before him was the familiar maze of instrument dials and signal
lights and switches crammed around a glowing, green-blotched radar
scope. Around him was the clear, transparent canopy, with the round
crash-helmet of Smitty's head poking up from the front cockpit ahead of
him. Below, off the edge of the razor-thin wing, was the criss-crossed
gray surface of the Arctic ice-pack. The sky was an intense blue-black
sprinkled with the hard, bright sparks of stars.

There were faint, rhythmic sounds around him. Familiar sounds. The
warm, dry air blowing through his flight suit, circulating over his
body. The air pushing into his face-mask. The rolling motion of the
seat-cushions, massaging his backside with mechanical dispassion.

Then the flat, metallic voice in his earphones. "_Forty-three degrees
left. Contact in five minutes!_"

"_Roger!_" Smitty's voice answered.

The ship tilted gently. Centrifugal force pressed Morrow against his
seat. The world turned slowly beneath them. Forty-three degrees.

Two minutes later, a bright spark appeared on his radar scope. "_Air
spotted!_" he spoke into his mike. "_Two degrees right!_"

"_Over to you!_" the metallic voice from ground radar answered. And the
jet shifted slightly. Two degrees.

"_Contact in two minutes_," Morrow chanted. "_One-thirty ... One ...
Thirty--_"

"_Contact!_" Smitty's voice cracked.

The F-94 whipped over into a turn. The force of two gravities shoved
Morrow down in his seat.

For a brief moment--a breathless, eternal moment, all of two
seconds--another F-94 exactly like theirs appeared directly before
them. Long enough for red lights to glow and camera guns to record a
direct hit. The practice mission was completed--almost.

Then Smitty snap-rolled the ship, missing the other ship almost by
inches. The g's piled up, cramming Morrow down in his seat, pulling at
his facial muscles. Then his vision cleared and he straightened up,
bruised and somewhat battered.

It was the old bomber-interceptor game. That other F-94 could have been
an enemy bomber, plowing toward American cities with a load of atomic
death--

Smitty turned his head and looked back. His eyes crinkled into a smile
under the green glaze of his goggles.

Smitty. Captain Daniel Purcell Smith, then--or "D.P." Smith, which
were also the initials for "Displaced Person." A cool, thoughtful, and
smart jet-fighter pilot in those days, and a darned good guy. They had
taken Seattle apart at the seams on their one furlough, preferring the
devilment of their own companionship to going home to Mom's apple pie.

Morrow's telegram had made sense, all right. The words _scramble_ and
_May Day_ were fighter-lingo; _scramble_ meant _let's go! we've a fight
on our hands_, and _May Day_ meant _I'm in trouble!_

He was in trouble, certainly. The mechanism he'd developed was, in
itself, plenty of trouble.

And it was a special kind of trouble--the kind in which the only person
he could dare trust had to be someone like Smitty. The Air Force
camaraderie which existed between them had never quite faded out. Even
after they'd been mustered back into civilian status, after Morrow had
signed a government engineering contract and Smitty had gone on to
commercial flying, they had kept in touch with each other. Diverging
interests hadn't pulled them apart; the old school ties, the old
trustworthiness was still there. An odd letter every few months or so,
a postcard at Christmas....

He was fortunate to know a man like Smitty, Morrow knew. He couldn't
have carried out his plan alone.

He reached home, stored his motor-bike in the garage, and walked into
the living room. He snapped on the light and stood there for a moment,
gazing across the room at his littered writing desk. If he were going
to carry out his plan, there was one thing he'd have to do himself.
People weren't going to like it. Good engineers were scarce.

He walked across the room, sat down at the desk, and crammed a sheet of
Western Electronics stationery into his portable typewriter. He paused,
lighted a cigarette, and then grimly proceeded to write his letter of
resignation.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It's a mechanism that floats in the Earth's field of gravity," Morrow
began--

They were seated in a secluded booth in the modernistic restaurant at
the Newark Airport. Through the wall-length observation window, they
could look down on the airfield; a giant stratoliner was rolling up
before the building, the bright spot-lights glistening off the silvery
arcs of its six big turbo-props. White-uniformed linemen were pushing
the steps up to the side of its fat hull as the door slid open and a
pert stewardess poked her head out. Beyond the gleaming sky-monster, in
the pitch darkness of early morning, the runway lights twinkled in rows
and patterns of red, yellow, blue and green sparks.

Morrow spoke quietly and succinctly, pausing only for a sip of
coffee or a pull on his cigarette, and gave a concise briefing of
his discovery and its implications. The dishes of an early breakfast
had been cleared away, so no waitress bothered them and the few other
patrons in the restaurant were out of ear-shot.

Across from him, ex-Captain D.P. Smith sprawled laconically on the
cushioned seat, listening. The expression on his lean, brown face was
thoughtful, intent. He sipped his coffee and flicked the ashes of his
cigarette into the saucer.

He was a small, slender man dressed in a conservative, pin-stripe
business suit. There was nothing dare-devil about his attitude, nor
were his movements deft or quick. He was slow, cautious; his attitude
was a reserved calmness.

It was immediately noticeable. His carefully groomed black hair and
his small, black mustache gave his features a mischievous look. There
was something satanic about his small stature, his long hands, and his
lean, handsome appearance. One would expect a bright, hand-painted tie
and a roving, speculative eye. His utter calmness and reserve seemed
incongruous.

Only the faint, white scar along his jawline might have indicated a
devil-may-care experience. Morrow had mentioned it, remembering that
Smitty had written about the crash last year--he was making a pass over
a field, spreading bug-killer spray over a farmer's potato crop, when
a sudden down-draft caught his plane and he couldn't pull up in time
to avoid the neighboring orchard. He'd crashed through the apple trees,
snapping them like kindling. The plane was completely demolished.

_When I woke up_, he'd written, _they had me spread out on a silver
tray with an apple in my mouth!_

Crop-dusting was a hard, dangerous job. The pilots did most of their
flying before dawn or in early afternoon, when the air was calm; but
they had to fly at other times, too, to make enough to meet expenses.
They'd take off in small, worn-out planes, loaded beyond safety flight
limits with bug-killer, and fly to some farmer's fields. Then they'd
make passes back and forth over the fields, flying below-treetop,
leap-frogging barbed-wire fences, zooming under telephone lines, and
dodging trees and farm buildings, their eyes stinging as the spray
billowed back into the cockpit.

The pay they received was small, mostly because there were so many
skilled pilots looking for work and so few civilian flying jobs. Smitty
could easily reenlist in the Air Force, of course, but they wouldn't
give him a flying job; at thirty-two, he was too old for military
flying. They took the eighteen-year-olds for that. And Smitty wouldn't
reenlist to sit behind a desk.

So he dusted crops. It was no job for a dare-devil, either. A pilot had
to know his limitations, the limitations of his plane, and what he was
doing every second.

       *       *       *       *       *

"--And that's the situation," Morrow concluded. "If the mechanism isn't
destroyed, it'll plunge the world into atomic war. If it is destroyed,
it'll be lost to mankind for the next several hundred years--until
somebody else stumbles across it."

"In short," Smitty resumed, "if we got it now, we have atomic war. If
we don't have it for the next few centuries, we _will_ have atomic war."

"I'm afraid so," Morrow affirmed. "Unless they manage to develop a
world civilization and government without it."

Smitty shook his head. "They need something like this gravity machine
to pull people closer together, to get them to know more about one
another. Otherwise, any world government scheme is likely to be a
fizz--unless it's established by force!"

"That'd amount to world dictatorship."

Smitty shrugged. "All right, so we've got this thing. If we keep it, we
get atomic war. If we don't, maybe our grand-children get atomic war.
That it?"

Morrow nodded.

"So you must have some plan up your sleeve!" Smitty grinned at him,
shrewdly. "You wouldn't drag me all the way up here just to listen to a
hard-luck story."

Morrow's eyes narrowed. "Smitty, the only reason this would cause an
atomic war now is because the world situation is so tense--"

"True!"

"--But the world situation isn't always going to be this way! Sooner
or later, something will happen to change it. Something's bound to
change it! This is a modern, fast-moving world--things happen fast!"

"So?" Smitty raised his brows, querulously.

"Well, it's bound to change within our lifetime! And when it does, we
may have an opportunity to reveal this discovery. All we have to do is
wait, keep it secret, test it and develop it, and turn it loose when
the time is ripe!"

"Un-huh," Smitty grunted. "And who's going to pay for it?"

"I've got seven thousand in the bank--"

"And I've got three!" Smitty frowned scornfully. "How far do you think
we'd get on ten thousand bucks, chum?"

"As far as we'll need to get," Morrow retorted. "We aren't trying
to finance a mass-production scheme, remember. This is strictly
experimental work."

"What would the retail cost amount to on that mechanism you built?" he
asked dubiously.

Morrow scratched his jaw, reflectively. "Retail cost it'd run to around
three hundred dollars."

"So we make a bunch of those mechanisms. Now, what do we test 'em for?"

"For their use as a means of air transportation," Morrow answered.
"Primarily, that is--there are probably a good many other
possibilities."

"So how do we test 'em?" Smitty persisted. "How do you test any flight
mechanism? You take it up in a plane, turn it on, and see how it works!
So for thorough tests, including high-altitude performance, we'll need
a plane with a pressurized cabin, big enough to hold our test equipment
and the mechanisms. At the present market rates, you won't buy a plane
like that for much less than fifteen thousand dollars!"

Morrow was shaking his head, patiently. "We can't do it that way," he
said. "But we can afford the cheap plastic materials they're using
in small private planes, now, and build a ship especially for the
mechanisms. Then we can test it for low-altitude performance and, if it
works, gradually extend our tests on up to eight or ten thousand feet--"

"And if the mechanisms fail, we crash! That'd be sheer suicide--"

"Not necessarily. If they work at low altitude, they'll be dependable
in saving us from a crash. And we can install a main and auxiliary
system of mechanisms, so if one fails we can cut in another."

Smitty paused, thinking it over. He gave a slow, grudging nod. "It
might work, at that. It just might. But you realize what sort of
predicament this will put us in, don't you?"

"Such as what?" Morrow prompted cautiously.

"Such as supposing somebody finds out about it," Smitty replied. "Most
people have a pretty strong feeling about patriotism these days. We
have something that qualifies as a good secret weapon. They aren't
going to like the way we neglect to inform the government about it."

"Uh huh. Men have been lynched for less," Morrow agreed. "We'll just
have to see to it that nobody does find out about it. We can start
out small, in almost any place that's relatively isolated--a deserted
farm-house would do, I suppose--and build our ship. Then we'd have
to make our flights at night, until we're fairly sure of the ship.
After that, we could set out to find a permanent base--one hidden off
somewhere in the desert or mountains, where nobody will notice us. Then
we'll fly our equipment out there and set up shop."

"What about power? If we set up near a power line, there'll be the
company linemen coming around."

"I think a gas-engine generator will suffice," Morrow refuted. "We can
haul gas to our deserted farm-house by car, then fly it out to our shop
at night."

"What if somebody asks questions when we buy or lease this land, 'way
off in the middle of nowhere?"

Morrow grinned. "If it's 'off in the middle of nowhere,' why should we
buy it? Nobody'll know we're there!" He finished the last of his coffee
and shoved his cup aside. "You've been flying over the Southwest for
quite some time, Smitty. I'm hoping you can find the sort of isolated
spot we'll need."

"There are places in that desert country where no white man's ever
walked," Smitty confirmed. "They're still finding old Indian ruins
nobody knew existed. But you know we could get arrested for all this,
don't you?"

"Umm," Morrow ummed. "Building an experimental aircraft without
authorization _is_ unlawful, isn't it!"

"It's a federal offense!" Smitty exclaimed tersely. "Also, flying
without a license is a federal offense--and you don't have one. And
using government land without permission is a federal offense. And
you'll have to quit your job with Western Electronics, won't you? What
about your government contract?"

"I've given them two-weeks' notice," Morrow explained. "I'm allowed
that. Of course, engineers are scarce--so scarce that by quitting my
job here for no good reason, I'm getting myself blackballed out of
every other company in the industry. None of 'em will hire me after
that."

Smitty frowned concernedly. "Did you have to do it that way? I
mean--suppose you just disappeared?"

Morrow shook his head. "There'd be federal investigators swarming
around here three-deep!" he said. "I repeat, chum--engineers are
scarce! And they don't like strange things happening to engineers
who've been working on top-secret material. They catch more enemy
agents that way."

"You sure they won't investigate you for quitting?" Smitty's gaze was
thoughtful.

"I don't think so. In the next two weeks, I think I can convince them
that I've simply turned out to be a stinker." Morrow grinned sourly.
"They'll be glad to get rid of me, then."

"So you'll be ready to leave in two weeks." Smitty's tone was
non-committal. "Then I'd better hop the next plane out this morning and
start hunting up our base of operations."

"Don't you want to come out to Westerton and see the mechanism?"

"Uh-uh! Less we do to arouse suspicion, the better. I'll wire you, of
course, when I find something. Have you got a gun?"

"Gun?" Morrow started. "No. Why should I?"

"Good." Smitty grinned lazily. "Don't carry one. They're too damned
dangerous."

"I agree," Morrow said quietly. "It hadn't even occurred to me."

       *       *       *       *       *

The train rattled and squealed through the hot summer afternoon, dust
and foul-smelling smoke drifting back through the open coach windows.
Morrow huddled in the corner of his seat and stared miserably out at
the moving landscape.

_Have you got a gun?_ The words echoed through his mind. Of course he
didn't have a gun. He had never thought about it. Why should he need a
gun?

But the answer was obvious. The secret of the gravity-control mechanism
was precious.

Certain individuals, should they learn about it, would stop at nothing
to get it. Including murder.

And if the government learned about it, they'd dump him into prison and
throw the key away!

Thus, anyone who happened to find out about it would do one of two
things--try to steal it or inform the authorities about it. Either one
would mean catastrophe.

And there was only one sure way to keep anyone's mouth shut. Kill them!

Morrow knew he couldn't do that--he didn't have that sort of mentality.
Nor could he stand by and let anyone else do it, not even Smitty.

But that was what Smitty had meant: he wouldn't stand by and let it
happen, either.

Besides, any murder would bring on an investigation. They couldn't hide
from that. So it boiled down to the simple fact that if anyone found
out what they were doing, they'd be finished. Dead men don't talk, but
they get a lot of other people curious.

Somehow, they had to keep it secret. They couldn't afford to let anyone
find out about it.

And that could be disastrous. There had to be some alternative choice,
in case anything like that should happen. There had to be an out.
Without one, they'd be trapped.

They had to admit that some day, somehow, it _would_ happen. Someone
_would_ find them out. And they had to be prepared to handle it. It
would have to be handled in some way that didn't involve murder.

What other way _was_ there?

There had to be some other way. _Had_ to. Morrow chewed down his
fingernails as the train lurched and rattled onward....

They pulled into Westerton with a hissing roar of steam and jolted to a
stop beside the station. Morrow climbed down from the coach, wearily,
and strode through the station to the street. It was late afternoon,
but it was still hot. He pulled off his tie, stuffed it into his coat
pocket, and unfastened his collar. Then he pulled off his coat, threw
it over his shoulder, and rolled up his sleeves. That was better. Now
for a bite to eat.

He strolled down the shady side of Railroad Avenue toward Switzer's
Cafe.

_Beyond the law!_ his footsteps rang on the sidewalk. _Beyond the law,
beyond the law--_

Suppose someone did find them out? They could ask no one to protect
their interests. There'd be no help from the authorities. They'd have
to protect themselves--against anyone and everyone! How could they do
that without guns, without the possibility of killing someone? They
couldn't accept defeat that easily. The secret was too important to the
future of mankind!

But what could they _do_?

_Beyond the law! Beyond the law--_

"Bill! Hey, wait up!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Morrow stopped as if someone had jerked him back on a string. He
whirled toward the sound of the voice before his mind had recognized it.

Gwyn came trotting down the street toward him, swinging a tennis racket
in her hand. She was dressed in a white, short-skirted tennis suit. She
stopped beside him, breathlessly, and put her arm through his. "Where
you going?"

"Switzer's," he said. "Join me in a sandwich?"

"Okay." They strolled onward. Her skirt rippled over her smooth thighs,
accentuating her tanned, slender legs. "I go on the four o'clock shift
tomorrow. Want to come down at midnight and walk me home?"

"At _midnight_?" he taunted.

"Sure! It's the witching hour!" She wrinkled her nose up at him,
teasingly. "What're you all dressed up in your suit for? Going
somewhere?"

"Had to go to Newark today," he said. "To meet someone."

"Oh! Don't they even let you alone on Sundays?"

"Sometimes, honey." He grinned. "When are you going swimming with me
again?"

"Well, if you want to _swim_--" She broke off and gazed up at him with
mocking cynicism. Suddenly, her gaze went past him and she tugged at
his arm. "Oh! Wait a second."

She guided him into the little newsstand and left him by the cigar
counter, going on over to the magazine racks. Morrow stood back and
admired her firm, shapely posterior.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, pulling out a magazine. She fished some change
from the little purse on her belt and passed it to the newsstand
operator. "Okay, let's go."

"What've you got there?" Morrow asked.

"You can see it after I have," she retorted. "Why don't you buy one
yourself, for a change?"

She flipped through the magazine's pages as they walked along. Morrow
took her elbow, guided her around a telephone pole, and maintained a
discreet silence.

As they seated themselves in a booth, Gwyn closed the magazine and slid
it across to him. Smiling, Morrow glanced down at it--then stiffened,
staring at the cover illustration.

It was no more than a typical science-fiction cover. The setting
was a typical street scene at night--some dark side-street in the
metropolitan section of some city like New York. In the foreground
stood a young man....

But from there on, it was nothing ordinary. The young man was slumped
back against the wall of a building as if he were trying to mold
himself right into it. The expression on his face was one of mixed
surprise, incredulity, and fear. It showed plainly that he knew no one
else would believe him if he told what he was seeing; and furthermore,
he didn't believe it himself.

In the background, farther up the street, a group of people were
emerging from a doorway. A beautiful girl was in the lead, and behind
her came creatures that looked like men with blue skins, except that
they had tentacles instead of arms. The light of a street lamp revealed
the skin-tight garments they were wearing, and the octopus-armed men
had transparent helmets over their hairless heads. The girl wore a
helmet that was thrown back.

And before them was a tall, gleaming rocket ship, standing on its
tail-fins in the middle of the street!

And the young onlooker _didn't believe it_!

"She _is_ pretty, isn't she!" Gwyn's acid tones cut through his
thoughts.

Morrow noticed, then, that the cover-girl's costume was not only
skin-tight, but there wasn't much of it. He grinned wordlessly, then
thumbed through the rest of the magazine. Its pages hardly registered
on his mind. He was beginning to form an idea....

       *       *       *       *       *

By the end of the following week, Morrow had convinced everyone at the
labs that he was a heel. But that wasn't all. He also _felt_ like a
heel.

It began the first day, with Borgesdorf. Alec Borgesdorf was chief of
the Research Division. He sent word for Morrow to drop into his office.
When Morrow walked in, he saw his letter of resignation on the desk.
Borgesdorf was grinning and frowning at the same time.

"What the hell _is_ this, Bill?" he asked good-naturedly.

"What's it look like, 'Greetings from the President?'" Morrow retorted.

Borgesdorf's grin faltered. His frown turned to amazement. "Well holy
cow, Bill!" he exclaimed. "What's the trouble? Why're you quitting?"

"I'm quitting this whole blasted mess!" Morrow said flatly. "Does that
answer your question?"

"Wh--well, yes, if you say so. But--you know what this means, Bill!
_Why?_"

Morrow looked at him, coldly. "Suppose you mind your own business?"

Borgesdorf tensed behind his desk. The friendliness faded slowly from
his gaze. "All right," he said abruptly. "But if there's anything wrong
around here, I think you should tell me about it."

"Don't worry about it," Morrow sneered. "I'm quitting and that's that.
Keep your dirty nose out of it."

Borgesdorf's big, fleshy face reddened slightly, but that was all.
He didn't say anything for a few minutes. Then he gave a barely
perceptible nod. "Very well, Morrow. That's all."

"Sure." Morrow wheeled and stalked out.

Two days later, it was little Petersen. Petersen was a wizened, little
guy nearly sixty years old; he'd been playing around with radio when it
was a crystal and the cat's whiskers. He had consternation written all
over his seamed face as he came shuffling up to Morrow.

Morrow could almost hear the discussing that had gone on between him
and Borgesdorf--Petersen frowning worriedly as the chief said, _I
couldn't get a thing out of him, Pete. Can't understand it at all. See
what you can get out of him, will you?_

So here was little Pete.

"Hear you're quittin' us, Bill," he drawled nasally.

"What about it?" Morrow retorted, cursing himself mentally. Pete was a
nice, old guy--everybody in the labs liked him. Morrow liked him,
too ... but this was different.

"Nobody's done anything against you, have they?" Pete complained.
"You're throwing away a whole lot, son. It won't be gotten back easy."
His shrewd, little eyes watched Morrow, pensively. "The country needs
young fellas like you now, Bill--"

Morrow forced the sneer across his face again. "That's just too damn'
bad," he said evenly.

Pete's eyes narrowed. "You're talkin' like a commie--"

Morrow lashed out. The back of his hand smacked across the little man's
mouth. "Beat it," he said huskily. "Beat it, you damned little shrimp."

Pete stared at him for a moment, then turned slowly and walked away.

Instantly, Mart Sumter came stalking across the lab. Sumter was big,
broad-shouldered, with muscles bulging against his stained smock. He
stopped in front of Morrow, his fists clenched.

"If I ever see you do that again," he said softly, "I'll give you the
worst beating you've ever had in your life!"

Morrow returned his angry glare, then whirled and went back to his work.

"You heard me, didn't you?" Sumter's breath whispered on his neck.

"I heard you," Morrow rasped.

"Don't forget it." Then Sumter strode away.

Morrow grinned shakily. He was certainly getting what he deserved!

       *       *       *       *       *

At home, an idea was rapidly taking on form and dimension in his mind.
He set up his drafting board, collected his inks, and worked doggedly
through the night, etching out diagrams that showed--theoretically, at
least--how his idea would work.

At midnight, he would show up at Switzer's Cafe to walk Gwyn home.

The nights were cool and pleasant, with deep shadows along the
tree-lined streets and the street lights filtering through the
treetops, dappling the silent fronts of the houses. They strolled
along, slowly, their arms around each other, Gwyn's body pressed close
to his.

"I like a small town," Gwyn murmured softly, one night. "'Specially at
night--so peaceful, so cozy."

"I like the dark," Morrow said.

"Why?"

"I don't know. It changes things. It's a different world."

She looked up at him, wonderingly. "I think of a small town. You think
of a different world. Why is that, Bill?"

"You're tired, maybe." He grinned down at her. "You've been on your
feet eight hours."

"That makes me think of a small town?"

"Contentment," he said. "Small towns are contented."

"And a different world--that's exciting, isn't it?"

"Sometimes it's dangerous."

"I see." She was quiet for a while. Then, "I never asked you where you
were from, did I?"

"No."

"Small town? Or city." The latter held conviction.

He chuckled. "You're not even warm! Casa Verde, Arizona. A cluster
of shacks in the middle of a desert, with sand-stone cliffs rising
like mountains of the moon everywhere you looked, and black buzzards
circling in a hot, brassy sky--"

She shuddered. "It sounds terrible."

"--And beautiful." He murmured it, gently. "We left when I was six
years old. No schools there."

"Then--you're _from_ a different world, is that it?"

"You might say that."

"Strange. We're two utterly different people, aren't we, Bill?" She was
gazing up at him, studying his features, watching the dappled light and
shadows play over them.

Morrow sensed that he was on perilous ground. He said nothing.

"You aren't happy here, are you, Bill?" she spoke almost in a whisper.
"You never will be!"

"Most men I've met are--searching for something," he replied hesitantly.

"But they don't devote all their time to it," she protested. "They at
least manage to live fairly normal lives and raise families--"

"Do two utterly different people--" He broke off, leaving the question
unspoken. _But we're down to brass tacks, now_, he mused. _We just
don't feel the same way about things!_

Why was that?

"Look," he said, almost gruffly. "I think of a different world--let's
stick to that point, for now. You think of a small town. But then, why
do you read science-fiction?"

She frowned in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"Well, isn't that a 'different world?'"

"But it's _fiction_. I don't think of reality--"

He smiled gravely. "You don't think there are horrible monsters lurking
in the corners, or little people in the wallpaper, or strange eyes
floating around watching you--"

"If I did, I'd be in a booby-hatch!"

"Or you might be a research engineer!" He chuckled softly. "Ignorance
is bliss, Gwyn. And how much do you know about reality? What do you
know of the mysteries within the atom, or the strange way the Universe
seems to be expanding as if it had exploded and the stars, including
our sun, were still hurtling outward from the blast?"

"Sounds like a good way to go crazy!" She looked up, intently. "I've
never heard you talk like this."

"Well, you aren't quite so ignorant," he amended teasingly. "You
realize inwardly that your 'small town' isn't quite so contented as
it seems--that beneath the surface, there's unrest. So maybe you read
science-fiction because it deals with spectacular forms of unrest--men
risking their lives in space travel or on other planets, changes and
developments that cause revolutions or wars--and you find solace
in that. The little unrest in your 'small town' no longer seems so
bothersome."

"Mr. Morrow," she spoke icily. "I do _not_ enjoy having you pick my
mind apart!"

_Then why must you criticize me?_ he thought. But he didn't say it
aloud....

       *       *       *       *       *

Sunday afternoon, they went swimming. There was a secluded strip of
beach where Morrow spread a blanket out on the sand, and after they
had swum and splashed and dived to near-exhaustion, they sprawled
themselves out on the blanket and let the warm sun dry their skin. Gwyn
lay on her stomach and removed her halter, then rolled her trunks into
a narrow band around her thighs. Morrow watched with mingled interest
and affection. Gwyn scowled at him, then pretended to ignore him.

When his skin began to sting through the sun-tan oil, Morrow suggested
they move into the shade of the trees. Gwyn struggled back into her
halter and sat up. They dragged the blanket back into the shade and sat
down again. Morrow put his arms around her, and they talked for a while.

When Gwyn came out of the bushes wearing her shorts and blouse, she
grinned and wrinkled her nose at him. "This has been wonderful, Bill. I
almost wish we could be like this forever!" She let him kiss her, then.

They rode back to town on his little motor-bike and had cokes and
hamburgers at a lunch-stand.

The second week passed without significance. The other engineers at the
labs treated him coolly, now. They'd be glad when he left. At home,
his diagrams were finished. He went over them again, checking them
thoroughly.

Friday, a telegram reached him at the labs.

    STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA
    AUGUST 20 1960

    BILL MORROW
    WESTERTON, NEW JERSEY

    HIRED PLANE AND FLEW RECON. PERFECT SITE LOCATED NEVADA. LEASED
    ABANDONED SAWMILL IN SIERRA NEVADAS NEAR HERE. WIRE E-T-A TO L.A.
    INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. MEET YOU THERE.

    D.P. SMITH

Saturday, he spent most of the day settling his affairs and packing for
the trip.

The plan had begun. Whether it worked or not, he was going through with
it.

The gravity-control mechanism would not be turned loose on the world to
increase the tensions and fears already much too prevalent to the point
where mankind would plunge into atomic war.

But the gravity-control mechanism wouldn't be abandoned, either. They'd
develop it, secretly. They'd have it ready when the world situation
changed--for the better, Morrow hoped--and it could be given to the
world. Then, mankind would benefit from it.

That was his whole purpose--that his discovery should benefit mankind,
rather than pave the way to the destruction of civilization. Morrow
considered it a purpose worthy of all the sacrifices he had to make.
His job, his career--perhaps later, if the plan worked, he could regain
them.

But he had to try.

       *       *       *       *       *

The battered, worn truck came whining out of the rutted dirt road,
clashed its gears, and rumbled into the wide sawmill yard. On the
left, a little mountain stream laughed merrily over the rocks and then
widened out, ahead, and trickled sluggishly across a brakish pond. On
the right, at the foot of the tall pine trees, were the crumbling ruins
of sheds and outbuildings, piles of rotted wood.

The truck halted before the main sawmill building across the yard. The
mill was weather-stained and decrepit-looking, with the boards fallen
off one wall and the roof sagging on one corner, but it was still
standing.

Morrow and Smith climbed down from the cab of the mud-splattered truck
and stood gazing around them. "Looks like she's been abandoned for
quite a while," Morrow remarked noncommittally.

"She has," Smitty agreed. "But it'll serve our purposes, I think. This
main building is large enough to be our hanger-workshop with a minimum
of repairs. The timbers have tightened up until they're like iron, else
the whole building would've collapsed long ago."

Morrow nodded. "Long as the timbers are sturdy, we can patch up the
holes with canvas tarpaulin if we have to."

Smitty hooked his thumb toward the stream. "I got a lab analysis of
the water--it's drinkable. But we'll have to spread some oil on that
pond to kill the mosquitoes. We don't have any neighbors to worry about
within ten miles of here; Yosemite National Park's due south of here
about fifteen miles."

"What about fire towers?"

"Forest rangers? The nearest is over on a mountainside twenty miles
away. He's not going to see anything at night unless it's a fire."
Smitty grinned reflectively. "I figure this can serve as our temporary
base until we get the ship built and flight-tested. Then we travel due
east across some of the worst desert and mountain country you'll ever
see, to the site I've picked for our permanent base. It's in a deep,
crooked canyon over on the other side of the Kawich Range, in Nevada."

"Not near any atomic project area, is it?"

"Uh-uh. Not near anything else, either. It's not near any airway
routes, and private pilots shun that area because there aren't any
fields or meadows available for emergency forced-landings."

"Sounds good!" Morrow complimented him. "Where do we camp, here?"

"I've knocked together a small cabin back in the woods. Grab your stuff
out of the truck and come on--I'll fix us some chow!"

Morrow climbed into the rear of the truck and slid his luggage back
to the tailgate. Smitty took a couple of suitcases, Morrow the third
and his equipment case, and they strode off on a narrow trail winding
through the trees.

"Now what was it you've been working on?" Smitty asked as he led the
way.

"I've been working, on?" Morrow echoed blankly, his mind filled with
sensations of clear, cool mountain breeze and the smell of tall pines
and the eternal silence of the woodland.

"Yeah!" Smitty prompted. "When we were having dinner, back in L.A.,
remember, we were talking about the event of anyone catching us at
this, that we'd be finished if they did? You said you'd been working on
something that would protect us from discovery."

"Oh, that!" Morrow grinned. "I merely figured out a means of
camouflage."

"Camouflage?"

"It's still just in its theoretical stage, but I think it'll work. I'll
show you my diagrams."

"Show me while we're eating."

       *       *       *       *       *

The little shack nestled under the pines was cozy and weather-proof,
built out of rough lumber and fitted out with hand-made furniture. The
air was filled with the aroma of fried bacon, coffee, and wood smoke.
They sat at the small, wooden table and ate out of tin plates, washing
it down with tin cups of coffee, and Morrow spread his diagrams between
them and explained his idea to Smitty.

"--So it's all designed around that propulsion unit," he said. "The
gravity-control ring establishes a focus of 'false gravity' inside the
tail-pipe so that air is sucked in through the scoops on the ship's
hull. The air 'falls' into that focus of 'false gravity' and goes on
past it to shoot out the tail-pipe at an estimated sixty-mile-an-hour
gale."

"Couldn't we do just as well with a large electric fan?" Smitty asked,
half-jokingly.

"This propulsion unit will cost only a fraction of the price of a large
air-conditioning fan and motor," Morrow pointed out.

Smitty grinned at the diagrams. "Okay, but you've certainly sketched in
a fancy-looking ship, there! Aero-dynamically, I'm afraid it wouldn't
be too practical--"

"I know," Morrow admitted. "But we'll have to work that out and still
keep this fancy-looking ship."

"How come?"

"Because that's the whole idea, Smitty! Think a minute. Suppose we've
built our ship and are flight-testing it. So there's always the
possibility that someone will see it--"

"--And call the cops!"

"Right. Normally, that would bring on an investigation and we'd be
finished."

"I hope they serve good food at Leavenworth!"

"Stop interrupting, will you? Now, the idea is this: suppose whoever
sees us _thinks_ they're seeing a ship _from outer space_?"

Smitty's grin faded. He stared at Morrow for a moment, then picked up
his cup and took a healthy swig of coffee. "I see what you mean," he
said, replacing his cup carefully on the table. "They think they're
seeing a rocket ship from Mars, or something like that. So they go to
the cops and start yelling about it. And that's happened so often--"

"We won't have to worry about any thorough investigation," Morrow
concluded, smiling. "They might check the area in which our ship was
sighted--"

"Which isn't likely to be around here!"

"--But that's all. Even if it is around here, they aren't going to ask
us too many questions so long as we don't have two heads, blue skin,
and arms like an octopus!"

Smitty chuckled mirthfully. "You'd better keep out of sight, then!"

"Cut the quips!" Morrow growled mockingly. "I think the idea will work.
We'll just have to design the ship so it looks weird enough to excite
the imagination. It may have some aerodynamic faults, but it's worth
the trouble."

"We can't make it _too_ fancy," Smitty warned. "It's still gotta fly!"

"We don't want it too fancy--just so it _looks_ like a spaceship!
First thing we'll have to do, though, is check the costs of plastic
construction materials for aircraft." Morrow gulped the last of his
meal down with a swallow of coffee, stacked his cup, plate, and
utensils, and set them aside. "We don't want to go too deep into our
capital to build this ship," he said wryly. "The lease on this property
has already soaked us two thousand."

"What'll the shop machinery come to?" Smitty asked pensively.

"Around a thousand, I think."

"Then I think we can build the ship for around--well, anywhere from one
to three thousand dollars. At the most, that'll be just over half our
capital down the drain." He frowned. "What'll the rest of it be for?
Operating expenses?"

"Mostly that. There are a few other ideas I'd like to try out,
though--experiments with these mechanisms. But remember that we're
dedicated to this thing until the world situation changes and we can
turn it loose without any risk. That may not come for years!"

"I've thought about it," Smitty retorted, grinning. "There's a deer run
over near our Kawich mountain hide-out, and other game is plentiful.
Our meat supply for the next hundred years costs no more than the price
of a couple of hunting rifles."

Morrow shook his head. "That might be fine, Smitty. Maybe we could
plant a vegetable garden, too, and live off the land. But I don't think
we should subject ourselves to the life of a hermit. We've got to keep
our perspective with this thing, and not get anti-social about it."

"A hermit's life would get kinda boring, anyway," Smitty conceded. "But
I can always go back to crop-dusting and make a few dollars now and
then. What'll you do, though? Can you get a job?"

"I know electronics!" Morrow smiled grimly. "I suppose I could open up
a little radio repair shop somewhere."

"You? A radio repair shop? The first real genius this country's had
for--" Smitty broke off, staring at him.

Morrow stared back, scowling. "Genius?" he echoed. "What in hell ever
gave you _that_ idea?"

Smitty grinned faintly as he lighted a cigarette. "Guess I'm just
carried away by your two heads," he said, spewing smoke.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a full month's work just to purchase the shop machinery, the
building materials to patch up the old sawmill, the materials for
the ship's construction, and to truck it out and install it in the
building. They worked from daylight 'till dark, then retired to their
shack and spent most of the night going over the blue-prints for the
ship. Gradually, it took shape and form on paper.

Masses of cloud were banked against the surrounding mountains, covering
the sky with a solid, gray mass that shook loose a thin drizzle of
rain, just enough to dampen the ground, the morning they conducted the
first weight-test.

They used the gravity-control mechanism--they called it a _gravitor_
by then--which Morrow had built in Westerton. The test was conducted
outside, with a sling suspended under the gravitor to support a pile of
sandbags, with a rope hanging from its bottom to a small hand-winch on
the ground.

The gravitor rose up into the drizzle with its load, lifting three
hundred and sixty-nine pounds to a height of forty feet. It floated
there, the rope dangling loosely from it. There was an odd three-foot
S-curve in the rope just below the sandbagged sling.

Smitty stared up at it, squinting against the misty rain. "It just
floats there!" he exclaimed huskily. "On four flashlight batteries--"

"The wind's drifting it toward the trees," Morrow said in a tight
voice. "Better take up the slack."

Smitty stooped and wound up the little hand-winch. Then he straightened
and stared upward again. "On four batteries," he repeated in his husky
murmur. "Look at that snake-twist in the rope!"

"That part of it's inside the gravitor's field," Morrow explained
quietly. "As for the batteries, I think it's because the mechanism is
shielded from the gravity and magnetic influence of the earth. It works
entirely within its own magnetic field. Its electronic conductivity is
more efficient, so we're getting far more power from those flashlight
batteries."

"But _is_ there that much power in a flashlight battery?"

"Don't forget those batteries are also inside the gravitor field,"
Morrow reminded him. "Anyway, I'm not even sure that's the answer.
The scientific implications of this extend to such matters as the
dimensions and volume of the Universe, and the speed of light. Maybe
the Universe isn't expanding and maybe light 'particles' or 'congealed
energy' or whatever they are don't slow down. Maybe they curve through
a kaliedoscope of gravitational forces generated by star-clusters, and
the 'expansion' is a matter of refraction in our particular sector of
space--"

"Do you have these attacks often?"

Morrow looked down to find Smitty watching him with a mocking leer.

"C'mon, professor," Smitty chided him. "Let's crank this thing down and
get in out of the rain."

"Ummm? Oh--all right!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Crude wooden jigs were sawed out and nailed together. Plastic tubing
was heated and curled into the jigs and, when cooled, was taken out
in the precise shapes of formers, spars, and bulk-head frames. These
were welded onto thick plastic rods and the rough outline of the ship
began to appear. More rods were added, strengthening the framework, and
the ship began to assume its final shape in a spidery basket-work of
glistening, transparent plastic.

The covering was torn off a large roll of celatex film, and long strips
of it were spread through the inside of the framework and cut to size.
The strips were dipped in a softening bath, then stretched across the
inside of the framework, pressed against it and, drying, molding to
it to form a tough, rigid inner skin. Fistfuls of plastic insulating
material was dipped and sponged into the openings in the framework,
molding to it and to the inner skin. Then more strips of celatex were
cut to size over the outside of the framework, dipped, and stretched
over it to form a strong outer skin. The result was a large, sleek
hull, with a shimmering basket-weave framework and frosty-white, fuzzy
insulation showing through its transparent skin.

Gravitors for the lift units and the propulsion unit were built,
tested, and installed. A cargo deck was built into the belly of
the ship, accessable through large side doors. Power circuits and
control systems were installed. The forward, control pit, and aft
compartment decks and bulk-heads were welded into place. Then they
let their imaginations run riot on the interior decoration, fittings,
and furnishings which were easily constructed of plastic framework
with celatex stretched and pressed firmly over it to form the desired
curves, bulges, and flowing lines. Then they went over it with
sand-paper, paint-brushes, and dark blue and mirror-chrome plastic
lacquer.

The interior was, to put it mildly, luxurious and ultra-modern. Smooth,
flowing instrument panels and storage lockers molded into the walls,
foam-rubber chairs growing out of the decks, bunk-seats sunk into the
bulk-heads, and transparent-topped tables sprouting their chrome frames
from the fore and aft lounge decks. They finished it up with a small
lavatory and an electric hot-plate in the bulk-head cubicles just off
the forward lounge.

Finally, transparent plexiglass was fitted into the long port-hole
slots along the hull, and a large plexiglass dome was mounted over
the control pit above the smoothly tapered nose. Then they papered
the plexiglass and manned a spray-gun, giving the entire outer skin a
thorough coat of shimmering black lacquer.

The complete construction took all of six weeks working from dawn to
well after sunset. When it was finished, Smitty took the truck and went
into Stockton to purchase the three automobile batteries which would be
used to power the ship.

That night, Morrow sat at his drafting table scrawling rough diagrams
and pencilling in mathematical notations around them and on the back of
the papers. His table lamp threw a bright pool of light in the corner
of the dark, shadowy workshop. The night was completely silent, save
for the distant sighing of the wind through the pines outside, the
faint scratching sound of his pencil, and the clicking and whispering
of the slide-rule in his hands when he paused to compute some factor in
the diagrams.

Building and weight-testing the gravitors that went into the ship
had led to speculation of other possible uses of the mechanisms. The
possibilities were many, and Morrow spent his spare-time working them
out. His ability, however, was limited.

First, there was the electronic efficiency of the gravitors, the
increased power gained from battery storage-cells, the decreased
loss of power within the circuits and mechanism. If electrons
worked more efficiently in a gravitor's field, then mechanical and
chemical power might work just as well. It appeared, on paper, that
a small, one-horsepower gasoline engine might deliver the equivalent
of a hundred horsepower or more in electrical energy, if it were
incorporated into a gravitor field. Morrow worked this "gravitor
engine" out the best he could, cursing his lack of knowledge in
mechanical engineering. It might work, but he didn't have the knowledge
to tell exactly how it could be made. It wasn't his line.

Then, there was the possibility of using the increased gravitor-field
efficiency in radio communications. This was right up his alley,
but the implications went so far and so deep that only a thoroughly
experienced and trained scientist could trace all of them. He hadn't
been an engineer long enough to have acquired that much training and
experience; he wasn't a renowned scientist in the field. He couldn't
always be sure where he was right or wrong in his computations. This
was pure research; no book had ever been written for it. He couldn't
look up all the answers.

But it appeared that a small radio set would have the power to reach
anywhere in the Solar System, not to mention the extensive refinements
of any television and/or radar set-up.

The possible refinements of chemical catalysts and electro-chemical
processes were extensive, too. Staring at his diagrammatical results,
Morrow wondered if mechanisms couldn't be perfected to measure
the taste of foodstuffs as the taste-buds in the human mouth did,
to measure the smell of odors as the human nose did, to convert
carbon-dioxide into oxygen as plants did--even mechanisms which would
react selectively to the electrical impulses generated by the cells of
the human brain!

But he wasn't a chemist. He could only guess at the possibilities.

Finally, there was the possibility of applying the gravitors directly
to the problem of transporting the human body by air. Part of this,
he could answer: a gravitor strapped to a man's back would more than
replace the conventional parachute for emergency bail-outs. The
gravitor could be hooked into alternate power-circuits with alternate
field-transmission coils, so if it failed to work on one setting the
wearer could switch it to another, the equivalent of wearing a second
parachute in case the first failed to open. And unlike a parachute,
the wearer would have complete control over his rate of fall: he could
descend gently to the ground or, if he wished, he could stop and hover
in the air or even reverse his descent and rise upward.

That was part of it. Morrow had discussed it with Smitty and they'd
decided to incorporate it into their project. In addition to having
the ship look like something from outer space, there was also the
problem of having to make a forced-landing somewhere. They might be
seen on the ground, repairing their ship. The gravitors could be built
into a tank carried on their backs, and fastened to a special harness
costume complete with transparent helmet fitting over their heads. The
helmets would protect their faces from the wind in a bail-out. Also,
their appearance would be altered just enough to make them seem to
be visitors from another planet, beings who did not breathe Earth's
atmosphere.

But that still didn't give the human body a means of transportation
by air. A small, portable propulsion unit was needed for that, and
Morrow wasn't at all sure he could design such a unit. He was not a jet
engineer.

He wasn't too sure about the large propulsion unit in the tail of the
ship, either. Basically, it was a ram-jet unit. It ought to work, but
it might not work too well....

       *       *       *       *       *

Morrow tossed down his pencil and slide-rule, sighing, then pressed his
hands over his aching eyes and rose from the table. _It's too much for
one man!_ he thought bitterly, and dropped his hands to his sides.

He stood gazing into the deep gloom of the workshop, at the huge,
black hull gleaming softly in the darkness. Fifty-five feet long and
fifteen feet high, the ship rested patiently on the narrow runners
that supported its sleek belly. Twenty-five hundred dollars and
six weeks of cautious, painstaking work rolled into one beautiful,
fantastic-looking black monster with curved fins around the cluster of
"rocket" tubes in its tail and streamlined, submarine-type diving vanes
near its nose. Those vanes had been Smitty's contribution, operating
on a cross-control system to bank the ship and lift it around a turn
as the aileron-elevators did on flying wing aircraft. No other control
surfaces were installed; the long, sleek rudder fin was immovable.

The night wind soughed through the forest on some nearby mountain
slope. The ship stood black and silent, gleaming softly in the deep
gloom of the workshop. It was a weirdly beautiful thing, like some
creature of the Unknown.

_Straight out of the science-fiction magazines!_ Morrow mused,
grinning. _If Gwyn could only see it--_

A vision of her rose into his thoughts: Gwyn, lying on her stomach,
the tight roll of her swimming trunks about her thighs, the smooth,
tanned skin of her slender body, the firm swell of a breast beneath
her armpit, the sunlight glints on her brown hair and the cool, calm
wariness in her eyes....

Morrow grimaced wryly. Gwyn again! He'd been thinking entirely too
often of her, and too much, since he'd left Westerton. He kept telling
himself she was just another of the sacrifices he'd been forced to
make, another part of his life he'd had to deny himself--

Still, when he slept he dreamed.

He was just too damned young, he told himself harshly. The demands of
his body were strongest at his age; it wouldn't let him alone. His
instinct to mate, to reproduce his kind, demanded satisfaction. There
was danger in that. If he fought it, denied it, kept it bottled up
inside him, it could spread and infest his whole being until it became
a perverse fixation on sex. He had to have some outlet for it. Time
off from his work, time to relax and enjoy female companionship, the
nearness of a woman. An older man, in whom the mating lust had had time
to diminish until it wasn't quite so strong and insistent--an older man
could retire and live in an ivory tower of science. He couldn't. He
must make allowance for it.

Find himself a girl in town. A date, a little moonlight and soft talk.
Forget about a girl three thousand miles away. Forget Gwyn....

But he wished she were here. He wished she could see the ship.

Dawn was etching its rose-colored light in the East when Smitty drove
in the yard.

       *       *       *       *       *

They installed the batteries and climbed out through the simulated
air-lock entrance to the ship, peeling off their gloves and shoving
them into their hip pockets. Smitty turned, wiping his hands on his
coveralls, and looked up at the ship.

"We can ground-test her without taking her outside," he said
plaintively.

Morrow picked up his mackinaw and slung it over his shoulder, grinning.
"Can't you wait 'til tonight?"

Smitty scowled at him. "Suppose she doesn't check out? Then we'll spend
the rest of the night overhauling her! We oughta give her a ground-test
right in here, Bill."

"Fair enough--if she doesn't go through the roof! But let's wait 'till
after breakfast, anyway." He walked over to the stove, checked its
fire, and shoved a couple more sticks onto it to keep it burning until
they got back. "C'mon," he prompted, heading for the door. "I'm hungry
if you aren't!"

They left the workshop and crunched through the brittle ground-frost
to their shack. Morrow took his turn as cook, whipped up a batch of
sausage, eggs, and pancakes, and boiled the coffee to the strength he
preferred--which Smitty diluted liberally with canned milk. They gulped
down their breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and strode deliberately back
to the workshop. The chill November air bit into their clothes, but
neither hastened his pace.

As they entered the warmth and shadow of the workshop and pulled off
their coats, Morrow felt a fluttery sensation in his stomach which he
carefully neglected to mention. It was probably indigestion, anyway.

Smitty, too, was silent. He tossed his coat on the workbench, strode
straight to the open air-lock door, and clambored up into the ship. A
tight grin creased Morrow's face as he followed with what casualness he
could muster.

They moved through the luxurious forward lounge and climbed the metal
steps into the control pit. Smitty slipped into the pilot's seat behind
the controls and flight panel, up forward. Morrow took the flight
engineer's seat behind the instrument console, on the left side of the
transparent blister dome. The console sloped gently, like a desk-top,
its surface glittering with a dozen instrument dials, twenty-four
switches, forty-eight signal lights, two knobs and master switches, and
a jet-blast temperature gauge.

"Flight station checks," Smitty reported quietly.

"Roger." Morrow swept his hands across the console, flipping on the
twenty-four switches. "Stand by for gravitor check," he added, then
clicked on the two knobs.

The ship shifted slightly beneath them. The faint, sighing sound of
wind came from the tail.

On the console, twenty-one signal lights flashed blue. Three flashed
red. Morrow scowled at them.

"Report gravitor check!" Smitty prompted impatiently.

"Three gravitors out," Morrow growled. "One auxiliary lifter, one
auxiliary and one main drive gravitor. Must be a short in 'em
somewhere."

"We don't need the drives for a ground-test," Smith reminded him. "Cut
to main lift units and let's try her out!"

"Wilco." He switched off the drive knob and the twelve auxiliary lifter
switches. "Stand by to rise!"

The sighing wind was gone from the tail. He gripped the lifter knob in
his fingertips and, turning his head, stared out at the dark floor of
the workshop below.

He turned the knob, cautiously.

The ship rocked gently, then lifted. The floor dropped away beneath
them.

"Watch it!" Smitty warned tersely.

The ship paused, then seemed to settle.

They floated serenely, twenty feet above the workshop floor. The heavy
rafters of the roof loomed close over the transparent blister.

Smitty cleared his throat, nervously. "I think that's high enough!" he
exclaimed.

Morrow permitted himself a fleeting grin, then began to inch the knob
back toward its stop. "Stand by for descent!" he warned.

The ship settled slowly. The floor rose up with majestic
deliberation--then paused again.

"How high are we?" Morrow asked.

"A little over four feet on the altimeter," Smitty replied. "Want to
hold her here a while?"

"I want you to climb out and see how much it alters her lift," Morrow
explained. "One less passenger shouldn't affect it at all, but let's
make sure."

"Wilco." Smitty rose from his seat and came back toward the steps.

"Jump around a little," Morrow said. "See if it rocks her any."

Grinning, Smitty banged noisily down the steps and clattered back
through the ship. She rode perfectly still, unmoving. Smiling his
satisfaction, Morrow waited.

Then Smitty walked around the bulge of the nose, on the floor below,
and waved to him. Morrow waved back and, rising, moved up to the front
seat. The altimeter still registered slightly over four feet. He
returned to the console, sat down--and snapped off the lift knob.

The ship settled immediately to the floor, struck lightly, and rocked
to a standstill. Morrow clambored down the steps and felt his way back
through the dark interior to the air-lock.

Smitty was waiting for him as he dropped to the floor. "She checks,
doesn't she?"

"She checks," Morrow affirmed. "Now let's get to work on those shorted
gravitors!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The first night's tests were preliminary. They lifted the ship a few
feet off the ground and flew it across the sawmill yard and back. They
switched the gravitors from main to auxiliary systems. They loaded the
cargo deck amidships with sandbags and flew a weight-test. They took
the ship up to fifty feet and held it there until the wind, blowing
them toward the trees, forced them to come down.

The ship checked out in every test. They decided to make the first
trial flight the next night.

Morrow sat up in the co-pilot's seat beside Smitty as they drove
steadily through the darkness. Above, the stars twinkled coldly in
the black heavens and the white sickle of a quarter-moon threw its
milky glow into the control pit. Below, rolling gray stretches of
meadow spread out between dark, timber-clad shoulders and humps of the
Sierras. To the East, the timber gave way to rocky, cloud-wreathed
peaks. They were headed toward them, and climbing.

"Five thousand on the altimeter," Smitty remarked flatly. "That's ten
thousand, five hundred above sea-level. She isn't levelling out yet."
His face was grim in the green glow of the instrument dials.

Behind them, the black, glinting hull was crammed with sandbags. They
were lifting a full load.

Morrow kept his gaze fixed on the air-speed indicator. A deep, whooming
sound came from the tail-jets. The needle on the indicator dial
flickered restlessly, back and forth, over a single point.

They were doing forty miles an hour, indicated air-speed. They hadn't
been able to increase that speed. A brisk twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind
was blowing them steadily southward off their course.

Smitty shook his head. "Those jets don't even _sound_ right, Bill--"

"I know," Morrow said. He sighed wearily. "We've got to do better than
this. Take her higher--ram-jets are supposed to work better at high
altitude."

"I don't want to go over twelve thousand without oxygen," Smitty
replied. "Can't let this wind blow us down over Yosemite National Park,
either--if we can help it."

"Take her up," Morrow said.

The ship continued to rise, steadily.

"Eleven thousand," Smitty chanted. "Eleven thousand five hundred,
twelve thousand, twelve thousand five--she's flattening out!"

Their ascent slowed, gradually. The ship steadied at thirteen thousand
feet above sea-level--7500 feet on the altimeter, which had been zeroed
to the altitude of their sawmill workshop.

"Down!" Morrow barked. "She's losing speed!"

The indicator needle was creeping back past thirty-five, then
thirty--their sideward shift to the south could be felt. Smitty shoved
forward his control wheel. The ship dived.

They glided easily back across the mountain slope toward their sawmill.
Judging their wind-drift accurately, Smitty set the ship down in the
yard before the black, yawning doors of the building. As the runners
scraped the ground, he switched off the gravitors and slumped back in
his seat, dejectedly.

"We've got to rebuild that jet chamber," he muttered. "There's
something wrong with it, Bill. All we've got is a big wind-blower, in
spite of her weightlessness--the drag of the hull wouldn't slow us down
_that_ much!"

Morrow unbuckled his seat-belt, rose, and strode back to the steps
without a word.

It took them a week to pull out the rear bulk-heads and completely
redesign and reconstruct the tail-jet assembly. When they finished,
they tried it again. They got an air-speed of seventy m.p.h. at low
level, but it dropped to twenty m.p.h. as they gained altitude. The
tail-jets didn't just make a whooming sound, this time--they made a
rumbling, burbling sound.

They landed and pulled the ship into the workshop, closing the big
doors after it. Morrow walked over to the workbench, pulled off his
gloves, and threw them down.

"It's no good!" he said harshly. "That jet chamber just isn't shaped
right--there's too much turbulence in it, breaks up the jet-blast."

"We'll rebuild it again," Smitty said, with a shrug in his voice.

Morrow wheeled and glared at him, red-eyed. "We aren't jet engineers,
Smitty. We're building by guesswork! We can redesign that jet chamber a
thousand times and never get the right shape!"

Smitty moved on to the stove and began stoking up the red coals,
stacking wood on them. "She does seventy per hour up to seven thousand
feet," he said dully. "If that's the best we can do, we'll just have to
be satisfied with it."

"It's not _good_ enough!" Morrow protested. "She _has_ to have more
speed, Smitty. She'll be at the mercy of every wind that comes along if
she hasn't, weightless as she is!" He smacked his fist into his palm,
decisively. "We've got to get help, chum."

"Help?" Smitty turned and looked at him, querulously. "Where can we get
help?"

"A jet engineer," Morrow snapped irritably. "That's the only one
who _can_ help us. We've got to find one--" He broke off, suddenly
thoughtful.

Smitty grinned without mirth, mistaking his silence for hopelessness.
"That's the trouble, Bill," he said. "There's no one who _would_ help
us!"

"I'm not so sure about that!" Morrow replied softly. "_I'm not so sure
at all--_"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late Friday afternoon when Morrow parked the battered,
mud-splattered truck on a side-street and climbed out to go for a quiet
stroll in suburban Sacramento.

The street address he was looking for turned up in the next block, near
the edge of town. It was an inconspicuous one of the long street-row
of small houses with a green lawn stretching down to the curb and
dotted with a few evergreen shrubs, a broad livingroom picture window
in front, a white front door with a small ornamental iron night-lamp
mounted above it, and a one-story, red-tiled roof in the flat, gently
sloping California style.

Morrow walked past the house and around the block to the alley. He
walked up the alley behind the house. Its rear was as inconspicuous as
its front: a wide yard, partly in lawn, partly in flower garden and
part gravelled with clothesline, enclosed by a low, whitewashed wood
fence. The only noticeable difference was a small sand-box in which a
small brother and sister were playing with toy cars. The little boy and
girl wore matching rompers and had straw-colored hair which, Morrow
concluded, they must have inherited from their mother. He'd never met
Mrs. Foster, but he remembered Bob Foster's dark, heavy hair.

He walked on down the alley, studying the back yards behind the other
houses. He noted how wide the alleyway was, how high surrounding
fences, garages, and other obstructions were, and the lack of telephone
poles or wires overhead. He nodded his satisfaction.

When he got back to the truck, he took a street-map from the glove
compartment and carefully marked the exact location of Foster's house.

Then he drove out of Sacramento, had dinner at a roadside restaurant,
and proceeded to Stockton. Smitty met him downtown and they went into a
lunchroom for coffee.

"Groceries and laundry's taken care of," Smitty reported wryly. "How
was Sacramento?"

"Fine," Morrow said. "If the weather forecasts for tomorrow night pan
out, we'll get in and out without any trouble."

Smitty frowned worriedly. "It's still a big risk to take, Bill. We'll
be flying into the Coastal Radar-Defense Zone, you know, and we can't
just file a flight-plan at an airport for an unauthorized, illegal
ship. I'd hate to look up and see an F-140 night-fighter with its
nose-cannon blazing at me!"

"That ground radar isn't effective below three thousand feet," Morrow
reminded him. "I think we can sneak in at treetop-level without being
detected."

"That's all right, unless we fly into a power-line in the dark," Smitty
grumbled. "It's still risky as hell--"

"We've got to have Foster," Morrow said firmly. "I can't say for sure
whether he'll join us or not, but we've got to try!"

"Okay!" Smitty signed resignedly. "We'll try."

The following night, Morrow left Smitty checking over their ship and
flight equipment and drove the truck down to a gas station on the
highway, thirty miles west of their sawmill-workshop. He parked beside
the gas pumps, told the attendant to fill the tank and check the oil,
and went inside to the pay-phone booth.

He called Sacramento Long Distance and gave them Foster's home
videophone number.

There was some fault in calling from a pay-phone, of course--and
a Long Distance call on a rural pay-phone at that. Neither Long
Distance calls nor pay-phones nor rural phones had the new videophone
accessories. Videophones, involving two-way television transmission via
a camera-screen installation, were still in the development stage.
Metropolitan and suburban phones had the video screens. Long Distance
coaxial transmission was still too costly to merit the installation of
the screens on rural phones--which also ruled out Long Distance video
calls. To install the screens in pay-phones would, as yet, triple the
cost of the calls.

Naturally, the Sacramento operator would inform Foster this was a Long
Distance call; Foster's screen would remain blank. The gas station's
pay-phone had no screen. This was a disadvantage to Morrow: not seeing
Foster's face, he wouldn't be absolutely certain he was speaking to
Foster. He'd have to rely on his memory of Foster's voice, and it had
been more than two years since he'd met Foster.

Positive identification could be important. Morrow kicked himself
mentally for not making a local call to Foster's home while he was in
Sacramento. Suppose Foster had moved in the past two years? Suppose
there was some sort of slip-up that aroused someone's suspicions just
enough to start the authorities on an investigation--

Even the _slightest_ mistake might finish them!

And the call had to be made. Their plan was set for tonight, Saturday
night, because Foster was most likely to be home from work--research
engineers often worked late hours on weekdays--and because he'd
probably have the next day off. They had to get Foster out for that
one day, and it had to be done right. But they had to be certain that
Foster was home when they went after him.

The receiver continued its rattling noise in his ear as Morrow waited,
fidgeting impatiently, and the seconds crawled past.

The rattling ended with a faint click.

"_Hello?_"

Morrow exhaled a shuddery sigh of relief. He recognized Foster's
characteristic deep, muffled tones almost at once. "Hi, Bob. This is
Bill Morrow--"

"_Morrow? Well, hi yourself! Where you calling from?_"

"I'm on the highway," Morrow said. "I'm on my way north and wondered if
I might drop in as I pass through Sacramento--I ought to be there in a
few hours. You going to be home?"

"_Ye-e-es. C'mon around, by all means! You still have my home address,
haven't you?_"

"Sure thing. How've you been?"

"_So-so, between drawing curves on flight-test characteristics and
pounding out stories. You written anything lately?_"

"I've been a little too busy to give it much thought," Morrow answered
truthfully.

"_Uh huh! Well--say, you going to be in 'Frisco for next year's
science-fiction convention?_"

Morrow grinned. "'Sa little too early to say, yet. I'll see you in a
few hours, then, huh?"

"_Right-o! We'll have the beer on ice!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

Morrow drove back to the sawmill workshop and helped Smitty perform
a final inspection of the ship and equipment. Their plan was
worked out thoroughly. The ship would fly to and from their target
at low altitude, and at its maximum speed. The forecast weather
conditions would aid in hiding them, but it would also hinder their
flight--much of it would have to be done on instruments, and Smitty
spent considerable time studying topographical sector-maps and radio
omni-range vectors.

Their personal gear consisted of two special suits which would serve to
conceal their identity as well as aid them in an emergency. The suits,
patterned out of shimmering fabrilastex material, fit with skin-tight
snugness over their long winter underwear and socks. The foot-soles of
the suits were of springy foam-rubber, heat-welded to the fabrilastex
just as the seams in the material were heat-welded to a perfect fit.
A sturdy harness fitted into the inside of the suits to grip their
legs, thighs, and chests, suspending them in bail-outs from the sturdy
plastic tanks on the back of their suits. Each tank enclosed a gravitor
unit. A lightweight, transparent blue dome helmet fitted over their
heads and clamped onto fasteners on their shoulders. There were small
air-vents around the bottom of the helmets and in the fantastic-looking
knob attachments in their tops.

They pulled on their suits in the workshop and stared at each other,
grinning. "All you need," Smitty taunted, "is a flashlight ray-gun in
each hand!"

"You look pretty monstrous yourself, blue-face!" Morrow retorted.

"_You_ look _sexy_, old boy!"

"_Down_, Rover! Better climb on the ship's radio and check the weather
reports again--"

"Wilco!"

Morrow walked to the end of the workshop and swung open the big doors.
Then he went back and crawled into the ship, swinging the thick
"air-lock" door into its grooves behind him. As he climbed into the
control pit, Smitty reported that the weather was just as lousy as
they wanted it to be: clear, cold, and windy at high altitudes, with
some low cumulus and a five-hundred-foot thick blanket of fog hugging
the ground and creeping in and out of the valleys. There were several
scattered thunder-showers and by morning there would be solid rain in
the mountains.

Morrow switched on the gravitor units at the flight engineer's panel,
then moved up and strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat. "It's your
bus, Junior," he said. "Let me know when we reach my stop."

"Passengers move to the rear, please," Smitty retorted, and eased the
ship cautiously out of the workshop. They swung northward and set off,
flying just a few hundred feet above the mountain slopes. The moon was
a cold, white gash in the black heavens, and the dark mantle of the
treetops swept past below.

Unfastening his helmet, Morrow swung it back and relaxed, lighting a
cigarette....

       *       *       *       *       *

They had to use every precaution in going after Foster. In the first
place, they had to consider that he might be violently opposed to their
project--that, in fact, he might go straight to the authorities with
it. The only safeguard against that was simply to prevent Foster from
knowing where their project was located. Without that information, he
would probably find it difficult to make the authorities believe him. A
mere story about mechanisms that control gravity, without any basis of
fact to support it, would sound rather far-fetched.

For that matter, it would have been difficult merely to visit Foster
and convince him they did have such mechanisms! The only quick answer
was to show him, to prove it to him. Then he would listen to them.

There was a good chance that he'd approve of their project and help
them with it--otherwise, Morrow wouldn't have thought of him. And
he was a man who could help them. Robert Foster was a jet engineer,
employed as a flight-test analyst at an aircraft corporation's
experimental plant near Sacramento. Morrow had met him, however,
because Foster had written many stories for the science-fiction
magazines, mostly on the galactic empire theme. They had met at a
private science-fiction club in New York and spent most of a long
night in a bar, along with several other writers and magazine
editors, discussing subjects of vast scope and consuming beverages in
vast quantity. Foster had proved himself a kindred soul of fertile
imagination, if not of superior intellect, and so into the wee, small
hours.

In short, Foster had impressed him as a man to be trusted when the
going got rough.

Whether or not that impression had been correct, Morrow didn't know.
Tonight would certainly put it to the test. They could only ask for his
help, and that was all. If he refused, he refused. They couldn't use
threats or coercion or any suggestion of violence--that would gain them
nothing.

Foster _had_ to agree! There was no one else! Without his help, they
were stymied....

The weather thickened as they turned west, coming down off the slopes
of the Sierras. Silvery masses of cloud drifted by in the moonlight
and a thin, gray haze obscured the ground. They cruised along, their
tail-jets rumbling, descending slowly to pass beneath a long row of
clouds ahead. Raindrops began streaking the transparent blister which
pinged at their impact; then it began a steady, ringing sound as
the downpour increased. The world was turned into a gray, trickling
wetness, faintly reflecting the green glow of the luminous instrument
dials. The lights of a town appeared off to the left, wavering sparks
in the wet gloom. Smitty swore under his breath.

They emerged from the shower to find themselves over an endless mass
of cottony white, completely hiding the ground. "Now we gotta go down
through that stuff!" Smitty muttered, and pushed the nose down.

The ground became dimly visible through the mist at a height of seventy
feet. "Airspeed's a hundred and ten; headwind was reported at twenty
miles." Smitty chanted glumly.

Morrow said nothing for a moment, knowing Smitty meant that if they
were flying any faster their dim, wavering view of the ground would
mean nothing. Then he started and looked up. "A hundred and ten? In a
twenty-mile wind? That's ninety miles an hour!"

Smitty stared at his instruments and nodded slowly. "We're doing better
than we did," he agreed. "Either that, or this wind has twisted its
tail. We'll check it again."

They flew onward through the swirling, dark mist. The dark blurs of
trees flashed past below, and houses, roads, and telephone lines. Dim,
shadowy objects, hardly recognizable. And there were moments when the
mist closed in completely, hiding everything. Morrow felt a cold sweat
forming on his face. The jets made a deep, mournful rumbling sound
in the ship's tail. A highway swept past below, with car headlights
revealed as moving blobs of yellow in the darkness.

"This is the block," Morrow said, finally. "Swing across it and come
down in that alleyway in its center. I'll tell you where to land then."

Below them were the familiar rooftops of the houses, rising darkly out
of a thin ground mist. Smitty brought the ship over them, cutting the
jets, and let it coast to a stop over the narrow, vague band of the
alleyway. Slowly, they drifted downward.

Morrow consulted the street-map on his lap again. "Up a little
further," he directed.

The jets gave a brief, rumbling sigh and they glided forward.

"Here--ground her!"

Gravel rasped against the ship's belly. They unfastened their belts and
scrambled down into the ship.

"What time is it?" Smitty whispered, as Morrow swung open the door.

Morrow glanced at his wrist-watch. "Three-ten a.m.," he said
half-humorously. He wondered if Foster was still waiting up for him.
"Fasten your helmet down, and let's go!"

They dropped down from the ship and went over to the low, white fence
behind Foster's house. Passing through the gate, they strode across
the yard. The mist-shine glimmered faintly off their bodies. Their
blue-tinted helmets were grotesque globes of darkness, like the heads
of nightmare creatures.

Light glowed from a window in the side of the house. "Somebody's up!"
Morrow observed softly.

"Do we go 'round and ring the front doorbell?" Smitty wondered. "Or do
we just walk in?"

Morrow shrugged. "It won't make much difference. Let's try the back
door--if it's locked, well go around."

They reached the door and he tested its knob, careful not to make any
noise. It yielded readily.

They entered.

The faint light filtering down the short hallway was enough to guide
them across the dark kitchen. Then they had to pass the dark doorways
of what were probably two bedrooms, on either side of the hall. They
reached the lighted doorway near the front, and stood looking into the
living room.

Robert Foster was seated in a comfortable chair next to the television
set. A single reading lamp was burning--the pipe clutched in Foster's
teeth was out--and he seemed deeply engrossed in a good book.

Morrow reached up and snapped the fasteners on his helmet.

Foster lifted his gaze with the utmost casualness and studied the two
figures in the doorway. He looked quite happy and contented, dressed
in an old pair of slacks and loafers and a turtle-neck sweater. His
dark, touselled hair showed evidence of his hand running through it--a
habitual gesture of his, Morrow remembered.

Slowly, a stunned expression crept across his face.

Morrow swung his helmet back onto his gravitor tank. "Hello, Bob," he
said.

Foster slipped a marker into his book, closed it, and laid it carefully
aside. "Morrow?" he said. "So you finally made it! I might've known
you'd be coming by way of Jupiter--but why the get-up, friend? And
who's your partner?" There was just the slightest quaver in his voice.

It was almost more than Morrow had hoped for. He could play it through,
now. "This is a Martian friend of mine," he said, hooking his thumb
toward Smitty. "I can't stay long. Somebody might see our spaceship and
get curious."

"Your--spaceship?" Foster queried falteringly.

"We landed it out in back."

The room was silent for a moment. Foster sat dumbfounded, staring at
them. A flicker of a gleam began to show itself in his eyes. "Am I to
understand," he said gently, "that you have landed a spaceship in my
back yard?"

"No," Morrow corrected. "In the alley."

"Hmmm--it'd better be in the alley. My wife would slaughter us both if
you'd trampled her gardenias." Foster fell back in his chair. He tried
to relax; he even grinned, somewhat shakily. "Now what's the idea,
Bill? Why'd you come tippy-toe in here like this? Out with it!"

"Take too long to explain," Morrow replied, shaking his head.
"Somebody's liable to see that spaceship any minute, now." He forced a
broad, innocent grin across his face. "You want to come have a look at
it?"

"Ye-e-es!" Foster agreed sarcastically, rising from his chair. "I
suppose I _should_ take a look at it--"

Morrow led him out the front door and around the house. "Don't want to
awaken your wife," he explained, clamping down his helmet.

"No-o-o-o!" Foster conceded. "I wouldn't advise that!" They proceeded
on across the back yard, through the clinging, wet fingers of the mist.

Then Foster saw the ship.

After that, it wasn't too hard to persuade him to enter it. Then it
was simple to switch on the gravitors and rise into the dark sky.
Morrow had him planted in the flight engineer's seat, enthusiastically
demanding explanations in full, as Smitty piloted them swiftly homeward.

Foster was sold!

       *       *       *       *       *

They held a conference in the sawmill-workshop that lasted all the next
day and well into the next night. Then Foster went home to tell his
wife he'd had a hurry-up call from the aircraft plant and gone there to
work on some secret research; they drove him back to Sacramento in the
truck, and let him off near his house.

Then they returned to the workshop and went to work.

The following weekend, Foster drove up in his own car to see them. He
climbed out of his car wearing lace-boots and hunting clothes. Reaching
into the back seat, he brought out a shotgun and a stack of newspapers,
then Morrow came up to greet him and they strode into the workshop.

"You fellows have really been hitting the ball!" Foster exclaimed, as
he stopped and gazed at the small, needle-nosed ship sitting beside the
larger ship.

Morrow nodded. They had worked night and day to construct the second,
smaller ship--a little two-passenger job with sweptback fins and a
canopy-covered cockpit in its sharp nose. It rested neatly on its
long A-fins, poised to hurtle into the sky. Its color scheme--dark
blue-black on top, light gray on its belly--stood out in sharp contrast
to the solid, shimmering black of the giant ship behind it.

It had been Foster's idea. He'd pointed out to them that they needed a
smaller experimental model, easier to dismantle and rebuild, for the
development of their air-jet chamber.

"Have you given it a test-flight yet?" Foster asked.

"Ran it out last night," Smitty replied, coming around the two ships
to meet them. He set a plumber's blowtorch on the workbench and wiped
his hands on a rag. "It hit seventy miles an hour, then worked up to
seventy-four after a five-hour run."

Foster shook his head in puzzlement. "That's something I just can't
account for. A jet-pod ought to be just as efficient as its design,
and nothing should alter its basic performance other than a change in
atmospheric conditions."

"There was no atmospheric change," Morrow said. "Same altitude, same
barometric pressure, same thermal conditions. I'm beginning to think
the problem isn't only in the jet-pod design."

"That makes two of us!" Foster agreed. "The design I gave you should've
worked better than any seventy miles an hour, if your propulsion
unit develops that focus of 'false gravity' and squeezes the air out,
forming a low-pressure center, as you said it did."

"We've checked that, too," Morrow said, frowning thoughtfully. "I'm
beginning to think it's something to do with the gravitors' field of
influence. Come over here--I want to show you something!"

He led the jet engineer over to where he and Smitty had rigged a
gravitor mechanism and a sling-load of sandbags with rope attached,
just as they'd used in weight-testing the gravitors. He switched on the
gravitor, adjusted its setting, and let it lift the load of sandbags
into the air. Then he pointed to the rope dangling down beneath it.

"See that twist in the rope, just under the sandbags?" he said. "That
much of the rope is in the influence of the gravitor's field, which is
cancelling out the pull of the Earth's gravity. Now then, if it can
influence that three-foot length of rope, what influence might it have
on the air around it--and on the slipstream of air flowing over our
ships, which is supposed to enter the air-vents and be blasted out the
jets for propulsion of the ships?"

"It could be scrambling our intake flow," Foster acknowledged
pensively. "But would that condition alter in time?"

Morrow shook his head. "I don't think it does--or that it would unless
the gravitor's batteries were almost burned out. Then the field's
influence might lessen a bit. Otherwise, no."

"Then why is it that the jets' efficiency increases with time?" Foster
asked. "How'd you get seventy miles an hour on the big ship, then
ninety? And five hours' running built up the little ship's speed an
additional four miles per hour, didn't it?"

Smitty nodded. "It gets gradually better--but not much. If we knew
how it happened and what it was doing to the air-flow, maybe we could
design jet-pods with the right shape to use that air-flow and get good
performance."

Foster turned and peered sharply at Morrow. "Bill, doesn't that
gravitor's field work by conductivity of some sort through the
surrounding material?"

"Uh?" Morrow started. "Yes, it--wait! You mean the ship's plastic hull?"

"Right. And what about the polarization of that plastic?"

Morrow pursed his lips, contemplatively. "Like all materials on Earth,
it's polarized--if you want to use that word--to the gravitational and
magnetic fields of Earth. I see what you're driving at, though--the
gravitors establish a field in which the Earth's gravity and magnetism
are cancelled out, or bent back upon themselves. The mechanism of the
gravitors, the hull they support, everything within their field of
influence is placed on a basis of its own gravity, mass-attraction,
magnetism, what-have-you."

"And that's gradually changing the polarization of those materials,"
Foster concluded. "And the gravitors' field, working through the
material, is also affected. There's a gradual change in its influence
on other surrounding matter--and on the slipstream flowing over the
ship!"

"We'd need a wind-tunnel to test that, wouldn't we?" Smitty asked
dejectedly.

"Yep," Foster agreed. "And wind-tunnels cost money. The only other way
to test it would be to make a cross-country flight, and I wouldn't
advise that."

"What about a cross-country night flight?" Morrow wondered.

Foster gave him a strange look. "You two haven't been reading the
newspapers lately, have you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Morrow and Smitty exchanged glances of mingled surprise and guilt.
"We've been rather busy out here," Morrow protested lamely.

"I suspected you were," Foster said, a trace of grim humor in his
voice. He walked over to the drafting table in the corner, where he'd
left his shotgun and bundle of newspapers. "Pull that thing down and
come over here," he told them. "I've something to show _you_, now!"

Morrow cranked the gravitor-sling down on the hand winch and Smitty
shut it off; then they went over to where Foster was spreading
newspapers on the drafting table, checking and circling columns of
newsprint with a blue crayon pencil. Morrow stepped to his side and
stared down at the papers. The words fairly leaped up to strike him in
the eye.

                     MYSTERY SHIP NEAR SACRAMENTO

                         BLACK SPACESHIP SEEN

                      MARTIANS PREFER CALIFORNIA!

                 TWO CARS LEAVE H'WAY AS ROCKET SWOOPS

             BLACK ROCKET SHIP; 'NOT OURS,' SAY AIR FORCE

There were more than a dozen news stories about it--not front-page,
black-headlines stories, but two-column stories beginning on page two
or three and continued in the newspaper center-section. None of it was
spectacular enough to merit big headlines.

However, it had obviously been given a thorough coverage by the press.
A railroad worker walking to work the Saturday morning of their trip
to Sacramento had seen "a black, torpedo-shaped ship flying through
the mist at low altitude, making a deep, rumbling noise." A police
patrol car on the highway had seen it "flying low through the clouds,
as if it were having mechanical difficulty of some sort." Two cars had
left the highway and skidded into a ditch as both drivers saw "a black
ship without wings swoop directly over" with a sound "like one long,
continuous A-bomb explosion!"

Some said the ship was just a solid black shape, without lights or any
noticeable features except the absence of any wings; some said "a long,
blue flame" came from the tail of the ship. Some said "bright red,
green, and blue lights were swarming around it" and some claimed there
were "big windows in the sides, with something moving around inside."

Officials of the Air Force, both in California and in Washington,
professed to have no knowledge about the ship. But one fact was added:
both official groups said they were deeply interested in the reports
for "reasons of security," that a thorough investigation would be made,
and that radar surveillance along the West Coast would be intensified.

And one, final news story was headed: SEARCH FOR DOWNED 'SPACESHIP'
FAILS. There had been strong belief, it said, that the mysterious black
ship had been in trouble and was making a forced landing when it was
sighted.

"There it is," Foster said with a tone of finality. "These are all the
stories in the local papers. It's been played up from coast-to-coast,
however--both in the newspapers and news telecasts. And the defense
forces along the Coast are just waiting for you to pop out again so
they can pounce on you."

"Along the Coast," Smitty echoed pensively. "It's significant that they
haven't turned their attention to the interior--back as far as the
Sierras, here--"

"Probably think it's some sort of new Russian reconnaissance aircraft,"
Morrow interjected. "They undoubtedly have a nice, little reception
committee waiting out over the ocean."

Smitty nodded. "Any cross-country we plan to do had best be plotted
due east, across the desert."

"There's the atomic project area, that way," Foster protested. "They
certainly must have increased their air defenses around that."

"At low altitude, we can get around it," Smitty said.

Foster's features went slack. "Look here! You're not seriously thinking
of--"

"If we had a wind-tunnel, no!" Smitty retorted wryly. "We could stick
the little ship in it, let it run for a few days, watch the hull
polarize itself to the gravitors' field, and note how the air-flow
around the ship was affected. Then we could rip out the jet chamber and
design a new one that'd work in the affected air-flow."

"_If_ we had a wind-tunnel," Morrow emphasized.

"Right!" Smitty turned back toward the ships. "So," he concluded, "we
take the big ship! We head out over the desert and keep going, watching
how the ship performs and what the air-flow does to her. We'll have to
install a few barometric pressure-point indicators around her hull--"

"But we'd have to fly several days steady to get that hull completely
polarized," Morrow said. "We can't just restrict ourselves to night
flying."

Smitty winced. Then he rubbed his chin, scowling. "If we have to,
Bill, we can go east to Utah, then south through Arizona to Mexico,
then east again--flying across the Border at night, without lights,
won't be too much trouble; and once in Mexico we won't have to worry
about radar. We can go out over the Gulf of Mexico, if we want to, and
then turn north and fly up the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as far
as Pennsylvania. There's a lot of brush country in the neighboring
mountain areas--there'd be little danger of getting seen through there.
So long as we don't have to land anywhere, we're safe!"

"In other words, it'd be a cross-country endurance flight," Morrow
surmised.

"But suppose the ship fails on you?" Foster demanded tersely. "Suppose
you're forced down?"

"We're visitors from outer space!" Smitty replied, grinning.

Foster wasn't amused. "Let's not be foolish about this," he argued.
"We've got something here that we can't let loose! The world isn't
ready for it--"

"But we've got to have it perfected when the world _is_ ready," Morrow
said firmly. "Once the tension wears out and the world situation
changes, we've got to act! If we aren't ready, the world will go right
ahead and get mixed up in some other squabble. Then we'd have to wait
again."

Smitty laid a hand on Foster's shoulder. "You can get a few days off
from the plant, can't you?"

"What? Well, yes," Foster stammered. "Of course! But--"

       *       *       *       *       *

They took off at noon on a cloudy winter day.

They spent the afternoon dividing their attention between the
test-flight instruments and the surrounding sky. They hadn't the money
to afford elaborate recording mechanisms to graph every moment of the
flight onto neat tape-spools; they had to rely on the human eye, the
questionably analytical human mind, and the servo-mechanism of a human
hand wielding a pencil on a loose-leaf notebook. And they constantly
expected to see a razor-winged jet fighter hurtling down from the
stratosphere above them, its cannon sparkling the bright flame-color of
death.

They didn't talk much that afternoon.

They took turns at the controls and eating until each had consumed his
dinner, then gathered tensely in the control pit as the ship bored
rumblingly into the black night. Ahead of them was the Mexican Border.
Below them and around them, almost scraping the ship's belly, as low
as they were, was the jumbled, boulder-strewn Arizona desert bathed in
frosty white moonlight. Above were the cold, twinkling stars, the black
heavens--and who could tell what radar-equipped night fighter poised
above them, ready to peel off and plummet downward, guns blazing--

Then the Border was behind them. They took turns at the controls and
instruments again, catching a few winks of sleep between turns. Morning
dawned, and they approached the Gulf of Mexico.

Morrow checked their supplies--food and water for the trip, parts and
materials stowed in the spacious cargo deck for repairs on the ship if
necessary--and they took turns at breakfast. Then he and Foster sat
down to an argument about the scientific implications of the gravitors.
Foster was of the opinion that Einstein's theory no longer was valid,
that Milne's work came closer to the truth but was still vague. Morrow
thought differently, and they argued together amicably.

Noon passed, and they were over the green expanse of the Gulf. Smitty
called their attention to the short-wave radio. The newscasts were
quite interesting.

A professional hunter in Nevada, hired to exterminate a mountain lion
which had been slaughtering a rancher's cattle, was surprised when a
ship that looked "like a big, black whale" thundered over his head and
plunged down behind a nearby ridge. The hunter rode hastily around
the ridge, expecting to find the wreck, but the ship had vanished
completely "as if the ground up and swallered it!"

A Greyhound bus proceeding across Arizona nearly swerved off the road
when "a long, black torpedo at least a hundred feet long" came across
the sky "so fast the air thunder-clapped behind it" and left "a trail
of blue fire" behind it. Passengers on the bus verified the driver's
story, with some minor variations.

Two farmers standing in a field in northern Nebraska saw a flight of
six "fish-shaped" objects go over, each having a shadow "big as a barn"
on the snow.

A noted banker in Chicago created an uproar when he reported seeing "a
giant, black shape" rise from the waters of Lake Michigan as he was
driving home in the afternoon.

An amateur astronomer in Alabama reported sighting a "strange ship"
rising upward from the Earth's atmosphere "on a pillar of rocket
fire." The ship had mysteriously disappeared "as soon as it left the
atmosphere," the middle-aged hobbyist stated.

A Swedish Air Force jet-pilot claimed he had sighted, given chase,
fired at, and seen his tracers bounce harmlessly off a "black,
fish-like craft" flying at 40,000 feet above the Baltic Sea.

The news commentators added, in significant tones, that no airline
pilots had yet reported seeing such craft. One added somewhat
caustically that due to previous experiences the pilots probably
wouldn't report anything to the authorities even if they did see
anything, since the authorities persisted in treating such reports and
the pilots who made them with painful ridicule; the commentator then
launched into a condemnation of the current Administration.

"It would seem," Smitty observed from all this, "that we are quite
famous!"

"'Notorious' is the word, I believe," Foster countered drily. "If this
keeps up, some congressman is likely to introduce a bill providing that
the government produce some Martians with black spaceships. The voters
will demand it."

"It's good disguise for us, anyway," Morrow mused.

"Uh huh!" Foster grunted in reproof. "Unless we're found out, that is.
If the public discovers that we've hoodwinked 'em and there aren't any
Martian immigrants at all, they'll probably howl for our blood! I think
this is going to develop into a scare-issue, Bill. I'm afraid people
will want it, as an excuse to work off some of their nervous tension."

"Fine!" Smitty said grimly. "If anybody's trying to catch us, a general
scare-issue will have 'em looking all over the place. We're already
supposed to be in Nebraska, in Lake Michigan, in the Baltic Sea, and
somewhere out in space!"

"Invisible, too!" Morrow laughed.

       *       *       *       *       *

They passed over Louisiana in the early morning and proceeded northward
up the Mississippi valley. Indicated air-speed was two hundred and
thirty-eight miles per hour. Dawn was blanketed in a pouring rain.
They turned off up the Ohio valley and reached the Allegheny Plateau
in West Virginia, flying by instruments, topographical maps, and radio
omni-range navigation.

And once they almost blundered straight into a big, six-engined
commercial stratoliner. The stratoliner pulled up almost at the last
minute.

By mid-afternoon, they were approaching Pennsylvania. The drizzling
rain had changed to snow and sleet. Then they were forced down. The
ship's air-speed fell off with an alarming suddenness. Then the entire
tail structure took on a heavy load of ice.

They settled tail-down into a clearing on a densely wooded slope. The
ship wallowed deep into the soft, slushy snow.

The three men got together over the table in the forward lounge. Foster
kept running his hands through his hair, nervously. "We're stuck," he
said. "We're stuck here for the winter unless we can rebuild the tail
assembly. That jet chamber has to be changed."

It was obvious, after they had diagrammed the readings from their
various flight-test instruments. The ship's hull had become completely
polarized to the gravitors' field; the field influenced the air flowing
over the hull, so much so that a simple air-scoop couldn't pick up air
to blow through the propulsion unit and out the tail-jets. The air
intake had to be designed to work on the disturbed air-flow.

"It's a little like those 'space-warps' in science-fiction yarns,"
Foster explained. "There's a warp of the gravitational and magnetic
fields around the ship. The air-flow entering that warp bends and
twists to follow it."

"We ought to redesign the entire hull to comply with that warped
air-flow," Smitty suggested absently.

"The hull doesn't matter so much," Foster contradicted. "We could
design it in any shape, though a sharp nose and thin guide-fins are
still effective. You just happened to hit the right answer when you
placed the control-surfaces forward on the nose of the ship."

"Talking isn't going to get us out of here," Morrow remarked grimly.
"Let's get to work on that tail assembly."

"I got news for you!" Smitty muttered. "If we rebuild the tail with our
power-tools, it'll use up the juice in our batteries. We won't have
enough to get home."

"We must get our batteries recharged, then," Morrow said. "Will we have
enough juice left to get out of here when we're finished?"

Smitty nodded. "And then we'll be up a creek. Where do we get our
batteries recharged?"

"Couldn't one of us venture into a town around here and buy a few
batteries?" Foster suggested. "Without wearing our Martian costumes, of
course."

"Our Martian costumes as you call 'em are at least warm!" Smitty
retorted. "It's a little cold to go wandering around out there in our
coveralls."

"Wouldn't pay to risk it, anyway," Morrow said. "Suppose someone has
seen our ship flying around here? Suppose they make a report that
brings in the authorities and--"

"But who'd think a man in coveralls just stepped off a spaceship?"
Foster persisted.

"Uh huh. You have a point, there. But if the authorities were
investigating, they'd check railroad and truck shipments of any plastic
or metal aircraft construction materials into this region, and where
they were delivered. They'd check local machine shops, auto-parts
shops, aviation parts dealers--and _they'd check garages_! If one of
us walks up to a garage, buys a battery, and walks away carrying it on
his shoulder, don't you think the garage mechanic is going to remember
him, what he looked like, how tall he was, what he weighed? How often
does anyone without a car buy an auto battery and carry it away on his
shoulder?"

"We might 'borrow' somebody's car," Smitty mused, grinning.

"We might be caught ten minutes afterward, too," Foster objected. "The
police are quite efficient at catching car thieves."

"Then we need a car," Morrow concluded. "Smitty, can we lift out of
here once we've rebuilt our jets?"

"We could travel a few hundred miles," Smitty conceded. "Not that it
would get us anywhere."

Morrow grinned crookedly. "Would it get us to Westerton, New Jersey?"

It would. And the next night, it did.

       *       *       *       *       *

The three men crouching in the control pit of the sleek, black ship
looked red-eyed and haggard from fatigue and lack of sleep. They had
stripped off their shoes and socks to let them dry near the ship's
heater, and their damp, mud-stained coveralls were drying on their
bodies. Foster had developed a wracking cough and his nose was running.

The air-speed indicator registered three hundred and sixty-eight miles
per hour. Smitty stared at it, glumly. "Let's just hope it doesn't fade
out on us again," he muttered.

The test of the ship's performance had been the whole purpose of their
long, cross-country trip, Morrow thought wordlessly. They had made
every preparation they could think of for the trip. Each had a special
suit with helmet and gravitor-tank--and one additional feature: a
one-man propulsion unit. They'd developed that in the workshop when
they ran one of the suit's gravitors until its field had completely
polarized the suit; then, when the suit was suspended high over a
small wood fire, the smoke from the fire had risen up into the suit's
gravitor field and twisted and swirled around to conform to the warp
of that field. Knowing those twists and swirls, Foster had designed a
small jet unit with air intake slots and jet-pipes which utilized the
air-flow through the gravitor field.

Of course, there was one fault in this jet unit: it was designed to
use the air-flow around a gravitor standing still. With the gravitor
in motion, that air-flow was altered somewhat. But when Smitty had
floated up in his suit with that little jet unit built into its tank,
he had managed to fly around the sawmill yard at a good fifteen miles
per hour. The air drag against his legs, since the gravitor made him
weightless, was considerable--it flattened him out in horizontal flight
and, by swinging his legs from one side to the other, he was quite
capable of controlling the direction of his flight. The lift or descent
of the gravitor sufficed for climbing or diving maneuvers. He'd looked
like a human fish swimming in the sky.

For the ships, of course, such a jet unit wouldn't do. The ships needed
jets which would work while in motion, at speeds exceeding a hundred
miles an hour. Thus, they'd had to fly the ship until its gravitors
completely polarized its hull. Then they had to determine the air-flow
over that hull at flying speeds with flow and pressure indicators
mounted on the hull. Then they had to rebuild the tail-jets to conform
with their findings.

A flight half-way across the continent and back to their workshop would
have served for that. But then, they had to be sure that there was
no further change in the air-flow or polarization or gravitor field.
For that reason, they had decided on this trip all the way across the
country. It would give them a complete, thorough test of the ship.

They had even gone so far as to arm themselves for defense, in case
they were forced down anywhere and someone tried to get rough with
them. In a strictly legal sense, the streamlined plastic pistols they
carried were not lethal weapons.

Technically, those pistols were ray-guns. They fired a beam of light.

That light came from a standard photographer's flash-bulb. It was
focused into a tight, narrow beam by the pistol's barrel reflector. It
wouldn't penetrate the human skin; it wouldn't even raise a blister. It
was almost physically harmless. But directed at a person's face at a
distance of no more than twenty feet, it would leave them totally blind
for about three minutes. A simple flash-bulb delivered a nice, bright
flash.

A person suddenly struck blind wasn't likely to be in any condition or
mood to cause trouble.

All other preparations for the trip had been as completely thorough,
as carefully planned. Yet they had made one slight error. They had
forgotten to include extra batteries for the ship. In all their careful
and intricate preparations, that one, simple precaution had been
overlooked.

And now, because of it, Morrow wondered if the whole purpose of their
trip wasn't going to be changed. They were flying to Westerton where he
would borrow a car from someone he knew.

The one person in Westerton he felt he could trust more readily than
others was, of course, Gwyn Davidson. And Gwyn's father had a car.

But they couldn't land their ship anywhere near town, where he could
go directly to Gwyn. They would have to land some distance from town,
at a spot he knew quite well, and he'd have to proceed from there. He
couldn't hitch-hike into town; people knew him, would recognize him and
ask questions. He'd have to fly in on his suit gravitor.

And when Gwyn saw that, he'd have some explaining to do. He wondered
what she would think....

He wondered, too, at the thrilling tingle of excitement which was
washing through him in waves of--of ecstasy, almost! There was no other
word for it! He felt like a kid with his first toy.

The ship glided down through the cold moonlight and grounded behind a
thick screen of trees, hidden near the shore of a small lake. Across
the glistening, ice-covered lake, the sprawling log structures of
Lakeshore Lodge loomed blackly against the snow glare. The buildings
were deserted, uninhabited during the winter.

Morrow remembered it during the summer season, alive with people in
bathing suits, and small boats out on the lake, and this small clearing
behind the trees where they landed, where he and Gwyn had sprawled on a
blanket, sunning themselves. He remembered the spot quite well.

Westerton was twenty miles away.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was numb with the shock of the cold air and the weird experience of
his flight when he approached the town.

_It felt so damned strange!_ He was flying at about four hundred feet,
sprawled flat with the wind blowing and buffeting over him. His head
was protected by his helmet, of course, and he was only doing about
fifteen miles an hour--but the weightless condition of his arms and
legs made it feel as if he were battling a sixty-mile gale! And using
his legs to guide his flight completed the impression: he _swam_
through the air!

The yellow lights of town began to outline the streets and
intersections below him. Never having seen them from the air, they were
at first strange to him, unrecognizable--then he got his bearings and
flew onward. Or swam. His breath was coming in labored gasps. His whole
body was tensed against the cold seeping into his suit.

He searched frantically for Gwyn's house. It was after two in the
morning; she'd be home asleep now.

He spotted it, flew over it, and cut his tiny jets. Then, tuning down
his gravitor, he drifted gently downward until his feet crunched in the
snow in the small back yard. Looking up, he saw with a start that he'd
just barely missed straddling a telephone wire on his way down.

Shivering, he strode toward the house. It was a two-story, white frame
structure and Gwyn's room, he believed, was on the left side upstairs.
He went around to the side of the house and looked up at the windows,
puzzled. Which was hers?

It wouldn't do to try to scramble in a window, anyway. Gwyn would
probably let out a scream that would awaken the whole neighborhood--or
her father might take a shot at him!

Better to do it the conventional way. Knock on the front door. Ring the
bell.

Should he take her father into his confidence, too? Morrow decided
against it--no point in stretching his luck too far.

Then he had to get Gwyn out of the house. Alone.

Morrow shook his head, grinning wryly. This was getting more like a
kid's game all the time! Then he shuddered. It was cold as blazes! He
had to get inside and get warm!

He strode purposefully around front, went up on the porch, and rang the
bell. A good, long ring. Then he jumped off the porch and ran back to
the side of the house.

A light flashed on upstairs. A shapely, feminine silhouette passed
across the curtains as Gwyn crossed the room, pulling on her housecoat.

Morrow stepped close to the wall, tuned up his gravitor, and rose
easily up to the window. He grabbed the sill to stop himself and peered
in. The room was empty. The window was raised slightly.

He pushed it up, scrambled in, and lowered it behind him. The room was
small and neat, littered with feminine knick-knacks, and smelling more
clean and polished than sweetly perfumed. He strode past the rumpled
bed and sat down in the chair against the wall, out of sight from the
doorway.

His gravitor tank kept him well-forward on the edge of the chair.
His suit remained ice-cold and snug in the room's warmth, which he
felt seeping in through the vents in his helmet collar. He shuddered
violently, then sucked the wonderfully warm air into his lungs. He
gazed around, noting that his helmet gave everything in the room a
bluish tint, but he was so accustomed to that he didn't mind it. Then
he saw himself in the dressing-table mirror, across the room, and
almost doubled over with silent laughter.

What a strange creature he was, with a shimmering, bright skin and a
huge, dark globe of a head!

Gwyn would scream her lungs out!

He reached up hastily, broke the clamps on his helmet and swung it
back. Best to let her see his face, first, and recognize him--

A door opened out in the hallway.

"Who is it, Gwyn?" Old man Davidson's voice had the mellowness of a
concrete mixer.

"Nobody, Dad!" Gwyn's voice came from downstairs, puzzled. Small feet
stamped on the stairs. "It's awfully cold out for anyone to be playing
pranks. When I opened the door, there was nobody out there!"

"Well, go back to sleep, honey."

"All right. 'Night, Dad."

The door closed in the hallway. The small footsteps trod disconsolately
toward Gwyn's door.

Then she was swirling into the room, closing the door, and pulling the
housecoat off over her blue, pink-flowered pajamas.

When she saw him, she froze and sucked in her breath.

"_Bill!_"

It wasn't a loud exclamation, but a faint, weak cry. Morrow had his
finger over his lips, motioning her to silence.

Her face went blank; then she tugged her housecoat frantically back on
and strode over to him. Her voice was a low, insistent murmur. "Bill,
how did _you_ get in here? What _is_ this, anyway?" Her wide eyes were
sweeping over him from head to foot, unbelievingly. "What on earth's
_happened_?"

"Sit down," Morrow said gently. "Keep your voice low. Can't let anyone
know I'm here, Gwyn--and I need your help!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Gwyn looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then she said, with a
kind of silent protest, "All right, Bill. I'll get Dad's car out and go
with you. Now--how are you going to get out of here?"

"Same way I got in," he told her, quietly. "I'll meet you outside."

Then, before she could protest, he strode to the window, raised it,
climbed out, and shoved free--using his gravitor, of course, as he did.

She stared at him from the window until he touched ground. Then he
waved to her and went around the house to the garage.

She came out a few minutes later, dressed in a warm, woolen suit.

Morrow explained the project to her as they drove downtown. When they
got out on the highway, approaching an all-night garage, she dropped
him off. A half-hour later, she was back.

"Got the batteries?" he asked, piling into the front seat beside her.

"Yes, I got them," she said.

They drove on out to Lakeshore Lodge.

She was grimly silent all the way. No questions, no comments
whatsoever. She kept her eyes straight ahead on the highway, her face
expressionless and a little pale in the passing lights.

_She doesn't like it_, Morrow thought bitterly.

But if she didn't like it, why didn't she say so? Did she think this
female silent treatment would work on him? Gwyn should know him well
enough to realize that such typically feminine maneuvers always have
the opposite effect of what they were supposed to have on him. Silent
disapproval, huh? Then the devil with her!

But such obvious deceit wasn't like Gwyn, either, he realized. Maybe it
was something else, then.

Maybe she had gotten the idea that he didn't want her opinion. Suppose
she wasn't asking questions because she thought he didn't want her to
ask anything!

Possible, he thought. Even probable. He might have overdone it when
he tried to impress her with the need for absolute secrecy. Maybe she
thought he'd merely come to her because he needed help, that she wasn't
included in the project itself--

But _was_ she?

Morrow realized, then, that he wanted her to come back with him. Back
to California, to the workshop--

What would the others say about that?

And did he want to expose Gwyn to the sort of risks they were taking?

They drove up to the Lodge and parked. "I'll have to take the batteries
in one at a time, I guess," he said dourly.

"Where?" She seemed to rouse herself out of her own thoughts.

Morrow pointed across the lake. "The ship's over there, beyond the
trees. Remember the place?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. He couldn't see her face in the darkness.

"I'd better call them," he said, opening the car door. He stepped out
into the snow, straightened up beside the car, and swung his helmet
over his head. There was a tiny, pocket-sized walkie-talkie built into
the helmet collar under his chin; he flipped its switch and waited for
the set to warm up.

Then he began calling quietly. "Angel One to Cloud Two. Angel One to
Cloud Two--do you hear me? Come in. Over."

"_Cloud Two to Angel One_," Smitty's voice was a tiny, metallic sound
inside the helmet. "_Hear you faint but clear. Give your position,
over._"

"I'm at the Lodge," Morrow replied. Gwyn was watching him, wide-eyed.
"The girl is with me. We've got the stuff. I'll have to bring it one at
a time to you, over!"

"_Angel One, are you observed? Repeat, are you observed? Over._"

Morrow scowled in puzzlement. "Nobody here but us chickens," he quipped
back. "What're you driving at, over?"

"_Do not attempt to bring stuff here_," Smitty's voice taunted him.
"_You might drop something. Remain at your position--we'll come there!_"

Morrow's mouth went slack. Of course! He should've thought--

"_Cloud Two to Angel One! Acknowledge, please. Over._"

"Okay, guys!" he snapped. "Roger, wilco, over and out!" He switched
off the set, angrily.

But what was he angry about?

He wasn't sure. Something was wrong, somewhere. Somehow, things just
weren't working out right.

"They're--coming here?" Gwyn asked hesitantly.

"Sure," he retorted, his tones unnecessarily brusque. "They're coming
here."

"Oh." She gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead, not looking at
him.

"Gwyn--" Morrow started around the car, around to her side to open the
door and lift her out--

A faint, whining sound came from above as he reached the front of the
car. He stopped and looked up, startled.

The sleek, black ship settled down to the white snow before them. A
sort of strangling gasp came from Gwyn, then she was out of the car and
standing beside him, clutching his arm tightly.

The thick door swung open on the faintly gleaming hull. A figure in
bright, snug garments, with a dark globe of a giant head, floated out
of the door and came gliding toward them. It swung its legs down and
settled to a crouch in the snow in front of them.

"Well?" the strange, dark globe-head drawled. "Don't I rate an
introduction?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The batteries were installed. The old ones they replaced were stored on
the cargo deck to be recharged when the ship had returned home.

The forward lounge was bright, warm, and cheerful, with the
ultra-modern interior fittings and deep, foam-rubber chairs and the
moonlit snow and trees outside the long port-holes' slits. Gwyn sat
between Smitty and Morrow, holding her cup out for Foster to pour her
coffee. Foster poured with a deft flourish. He had his jacket tied
around his waist as an apron.

"I've always maintained," he observed with mock seriousness, "that the
woman's touch is absolutely essential to the success of any project
attempted by man!"

"Quite true," Smitty agreed, going along with the gag. "Though I'm not
a lace-curtains man, mind you. Just lace." He grinned wolfishly at Gwyn.

"Being a married man, myself," Foster went on, pouring himself a cup
of coffee, "I have so accustomed my tastes to minor discrepancies as
practiced by the fairer sex that I'm no longer disturbed by such. Nylon
stockings and underthings hanging all over the bathroom, for example.
As one gets used to that sort of thing--"

"Hear, hear!" Smitty chanted.

Foster sprawled in a dignified pose in the chair facing them. "As one
gets used to it," he continued unmindfully, "it fades to its proper
insignificance. Then a man can truly visualize the worth of feminine
companionship--the slippers, the evening paper, the scratching of one's
back--"

Gwyn was laughing. The tension was going out of her shapely, young
body. Her gaze was mirthful, speculative--especially when her glance
slid over to Morrow.

"One finds," Foster went on, "that the prime essence of--of--"

He broke off with a violent sneeze.

Morrow finished his coffee, set his cup aside, and rose. "We'd better
take off," he said flatly. He turned and faced them.

Smitty and Foster were looking at him with a silent reproof. Gwyn's
eyes were on the floor. She set her cup aside, untouched.

Morrow returned their look without expression. Something danced and
giggled and rolled, hugging its sides with laughter, inside him, but he
kept it off his face.

"Gwyn!" he said. His tone was sharp, insistent.

She stood up uncertainly. "I'd--I'd better be getting home, too," she
said.

"Right." He nodded. "We've got to get off before sunrise catches
us--we'll be safe over the Pennsylvania brush country."

"All right." She moved toward him, toward the bulk-head door at his
back.

He reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her before him. "When
we get back, I'll write you," he said gruffly. "Meanwhile, you can be
straightening out your affairs here, and--in a couple of weeks or so--"

She looked at him, then. Eyes wide open and shining, lips parted.

"Well, don't just _stand_ there!" Smitty bellowed indignantly. "Go on
and _kiss her_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was hardly a month later when Morrow stood in the doorway of the
sawmill-workshop, his arm around Gwyn, and said, "We need a good
mechanical engineer! Can't get anywhere without him--"

And a small, gray-haired man sat up in bed, a few nights later, and
stared at the two strange creatures standing before him. Their heads
were dark, featureless globes. Their bodies were covered with a bright,
shimmering skin. He noted vaguely that the female of the species was
stacked quite well.

"Can't do anything without a good structural engineer!" the little man
snapped angrily, a few months later, as they were standing around a
littered workbench.

A slender, middle-aged woman stepped off the bus and walked up the
quiet, dark street toward her home. Then she froze, a scream stuck in
her throat, as several weird creatures swarming out of the shadows....

A Northern Airlines pilot glanced out at the port wing of the giant,
humming stratoliner. His mouth fell open, then he grabbed his
co-pilot's shoulder and pointed out toward the wingtip.

Two sleek, fish-like little ships were flying perfect formation with
the big plane, their black silhouettes outlined sharply in the warm
summer moonlight.

An Air Force pilot rode his powerful, deadly jet-fighter across the
desert country, thinking of the wife and children waiting for him in
Los Angeles. Suddenly, he tensed, staring over the side. Far below, a
black shape was outlined against the gray earth.

Quickly, the pilot radioed his flight h.q. and fired his guns, blasting
their muzzle-covers away. Then he peeled over into a dive and went
screaming downward. The black shape appeared on his sights, his thumb
pressed the fire-button--no time to set up for auto-fire--

And then, the black shape was gone!

The wind stopped screaming around the little ship as Smitty cut
its gravitors back in, halting its helpless plunge. He pointed its
needle-nose up the black maw of a deep canyon and glanced upward,
grinning as he thought what must be going through that jet jockey's
mind. _Which way'd he go?_

Just let 'em try following a "spaceship" through one of these twisting
canyons! At a jet-fighter's thousand-mile-an-hour combat speed, just
let 'em try!

But, as Morrow discovered, a heliocopter could follow anywhere. It
wasn't when he and Gwyn drove into Stockton to get married, but later,
when they were playing follow-the-leader in silvery wonderland of
clouds under a full moon. He and Gwyn wore gravitor-units strapped to
their backs, with the harness incorporated into a swim-suit attire,
without helmets or any other garments. It was a warm summer night
filled with cool breeze that caressed their skin as they circled and
skimmed over and around the bright masses of cloud.

A civilian pilot riding his little ram-jet heliocopter southward toward
'Frisco saw them gliding around the clouds at approximately the same
moment Morrow caught sight of him. The 'copter gave chase. Morrow and
Gwyn parted, trying to confuse the pilot, but the 'copter swung on its
whirling blades and went after Gwyn. Its speed was greater than hers
and it was rapidly overtaking her--the pilot jockeying it into position
so its blades would strike her. Apparently, the pilot had a morbid
sense of humor.

Seeing this, Morrow swung back, intercepted the chase, and swooped low
under the 'copter, trying to unnerve the pilot. But the pilot merely
waved at him and laughed, shouting something about "_Gonna get one of
you, anyway!_" that Morrow barely heard.

He circled and dived at the 'copter again, fumbling at his belt.
This time, he pulled up to the side of the 'copter's teardrop cabin,
stopping himself by slamming both feet against the cabin. Startled, the
pilot jerked the controls and the 'copter dipped its blades at Morrow.
He had just enough time before cutting his gravitor and plunging free
to fire his flash-bulb pistol directly into the pilot's face.

Checking his fall several hundred feet below, he looked up and saw the
'copter wallowing precariously on auto-controls, its pilot pressing
his hands over his eyes. Gwyn came swooping downward, her dark hair
billowing out behind her, and called anxiously to Morrow--when he fell,
she'd thought the 'copter blades had struck him.

They lost themselves in the starry blackness before the pilot regained
his sight.

That spring season, the newspapers broke out in a rash of headlines
and front-page stories about ships from outer space and life on other
worlds, quoting eye-witness reports and authoritative comments. By
summer, the latest best-seller book was a loosely-written volume
entitled THE MONSTERS ARE AMONG US!

Those fortunate members of a certain group of thirty-seven men and
women broke into grins every time they heard the book mentioned. This
group had laid out a collective sum of slightly over a hundred thousand
dollars for the construction of a small vacation resort in the Nevada
desert.

It was a rather special resort. The buildings were built cheaply, yet
were designed by certain talented engineers so that their structures
were considerably stronger than those of conventional buildings using
costlier materials--a not too difficult feat, considering the outmoded
building codes which governed most construction--and were surprisingly
sleek and ultra-modern, as well.

The members of this group usually continued their work in plants and
laboratories outside. Each year, when their vacation-time came up,
they would rush off to a little radio repair shop in Stockton and have
a quiet talk in the back room with its youthful proprietor. That night,
they would drive up into the mountains to an old, abandoned sawmill,
where a strange ship would drop out of the darkness to greet them....

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a deep, twisting canyon east of the Kawich Range. Sand-stone
cliffs towered up nearly three hundred feet on each side and a
spring-fed stream trickled along the boulder-strewn floor, curling
around clumps of stunted pine trees and dense brush. The wind sometimes
tore through the canyon with a deep, mournful whistle.

Farther up, the canyon widened out. A pile of giant boulders formed an
island in the middle of the floor and cliff-dwellers had built their
dwellings in a large cave half-way up on one wall. Those dwellings were
now occupied and joined by slender spans to the three sleek towers
rising up from the island. At the foot of the island, a flat space had
been cleared and long, low sheds built around it.

In the middle tower overlooking the clearing, which was now occupied by
a slender, black ship. Morrow sat before the observation wall of his
living room and gazed downward. He wore a simple pair of trunks on his
tanned body, and socks and sneakers on his feet.

The man sitting in the chair next to him was tall, broad-shouldered,
and husky. There was a two-day growth of beard on the lean face and
the soiled white trousers and shirt looked as though they had been
slept in. The man's eyes were cautious and tense when he glanced over
his shoulder.

Smitty was standing behind his chair. Smitty wore the same casual
attire that Morrow did, with the addition of a cartridge belt and
holstered pistol about his thighs. The brown hand resting on the
pistol-butt--it was a Colt .45 revolver--gave their visitor silent
confirmation to the fact that he was, essentially, their prisoner.

"So it took you just six months to find us, did it?" Morrow asked
musingly. "Too bad about the shipping records on those plastic
construction materials--you must have traced down the shipments from
every company in the country before you found that."

"We traced nearly all of them," the visitor conceded. "In fact, this
one would've escaped our notice if you'd used any half-reasonable
company in Stockton to cover up your use of the materials."

Morrow took cigarettes and matches from the pocket of his trunks and
proceeded to light up, calmly. It was nearing sunset and the canyon was
already plunged into a blue twilight, in which the lights in the towers
and on the small landing field below glowed softly, in soothing pastel
colors.

The visitor sat unmoved through the silence. He had been caught
inside the old sawmill and flown to the hidden base the night before.
His credentials said he was an agent of the United States Bureau of
Internal Security, that his name was David Lyle. Morrow glanced at him,
speculatively.

"I've told you all I dare about our group, here," he said. "I've told
you some of the things we've done--"

"Without explaining them," Lyle interjected wryly.

Morrow smiled. "You wouldn't grasp the technical end of it if I
had told you. It's as if I were the first man to invent the wheel
and had gathered a few others about me who were now developing the
propellor, the fly-wheel, gear-ratios and the piston engine. We can
generate enough electrical power in this canyon site to light a large
metropolitan city, and we're now working on a means of using broadcast
power and perhaps harnessing atomic energy. We already suspect some
of the chemical and medical possibilities inherent in gravitor-field
conditions--"

"And you have the answer to interplanetary travel at your fingertips!"
Lyle muttered dourly.

"Yes, but without the financial means to do it," Morrow agreed.
"Interplanetary travel won't be important for another hundred years
anyway--if it is at all--since it will take that long for the world's
population to reach any dangerous numbers."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Mankind is due to reach the stage of population where he can no
longer feed himself on Earth," Morrow explained. "He simply won't be
able to raise enough food on this one planet to feed such numbers.
Either that, or there'll be three or four atomic wars in the next few
generations--if there's one, there'll be several wars--and population
will cease to be a problem.

"There's been some talk of birth-control as the only logical answer
to this overpopulation. It may be used, but I doubt its logic. You'll
have to tell some people they simply can't have children, and on a
world-wide scale you're going to have many cases where they disregard
authority and have children anyway. Then, to make your authority stick,
you'll have to take those unauthorized children away from their parents
and kill them. You'll need a world dictatorship to do that.

"The only answer that's really logical is when this world gets too
small to support mankind, go out and settle a couple more. That's
where interplanetary travel becomes important, and not before. The
astronomers claim there is very little likelihood of any native species
of intelligent beings living on either Mars or Venus. I only hope
they're right!

"But that isn't answering our present problem, is it?" Morrow grinned
reflectively. "We could kill you, Mr. Lyle, but that would gain us
nothing. There would be other agents following you. Also, it doesn't
sit well with our attitude."

"Just what _is_ your 'attitude' as you call it?" Lyle demanded.

Morrow glanced at him through narrowed eyes and replied, "Just what
would _your_ attitude be if you were in our position, Mr. Lyle?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, as Morrow sat alone, Gwyn came out of the kitchen and joined
him, perching herself on the arm of his chair.

"It'll work out all right, Bill," she murmured soothingly, running her
fingers through his hair. "Don't worry about it."

Morrow shook his head. "We've got to let him go, Gwyn. We can't hold
him."

"Then let's just face it," she replied, using her practical feminine
approach. "The government is going to learn about our project. What can
they do about it? Can they throw us into prison and confiscate all we
have here? What'll they do with it? Without us, they won't understand
it!"

"How much _will_ they understand, I wonder!" Morrow said dubiously.
"Will they realize this could ignite the present world tension into a
raging war?"

Gwyn looked out on the silent, brooding canyon. "Would it, Bill? I
mean--I'm not doubting you, darling--but are you sure?"

Morrow sighed wearily. "No," he said. "Not sure. I'd just rather not
risk it."

"Well, if it happens, it won't be our fault." Gwyn slipped her arms
around him and settled down in his lap. "Don't worry, Bill--"

It was nearly midnight when Morrow stood down on the field, with the
gleaming, black ship looming beside him, and watched Smitty and Lyle,
the agent, walking out toward him.

"Finished your inspection, Lyle?" he called out, his voice sharp,
brittle.

"Yah. I've finished." Lyle strode up with a thoughtful expression
creasing his forehead. "You got quite a lay-out here."

"Thanks." Morrow hooked his thumb at the ship's open hatchway. "Climb
in, Boy Scout. We're taking you back to Uncle."

"Ah-hmmm--just a sec, Morrow." Lyle paused, lighting a cigarette. "I've
been thinking about that question you asked me--what my attitude would
be in your place."

"Yes?" Morrow stiffened warily.

Lyle grinned. "One of the things that surprises me is that of all the
people in your group, none has spilled the beans. How come nobody
talked?"

"If you had what we've got, would you talk about it?"

Lyle chuckled, flicking the ash from his cigarette. "We're back to
attitudes, then--right?" He looked up, his gaze suddenly intent. "I
think I've got an answer to your question now, Morrow."

Morrow squinted at him. "What're you getting at, Lyle?"

"Those aircraft construction materials you had shipped to Stockton,"
Lyle said quietly. "Building an experimental plane without
authorization is a federal offense. The fine's five hundred dollars.
You got five hundred bucks, Morrow?"

"I think so," Morrow replied cautiously.

"And you got a couple aeronautical engineers here who could whip up
some kind of little airplane, haven't you?"

"Suppose I have?"

"Well, whip up something! Just so it'll get off the ground--put a
motorcycle engine in it--and the Civil Aeronautics boys will have
something to take their hatchets to. Plant it out at that sawmill of
yours." Lyle's sombre eyes were laughing silently.

"So I'll pay a five-hundred-dollar fine?" Morrow asked perplexedly.

"Uh huh. And I can write a report that'll close this case."

"You--" Morrow broke off, staring at the calm, good-natured agent.

"The stuff you've got here is poison to today's world," Lyle said
quietly. "Maybe, in time, guys like me can change all that. Until we
do--" He left the rest unsaid.

Morrow let his breath out slowly. Then he extended his hand. The young
agent's grasp was firm, decisive.

"If you two're through yakking," Smitty growled, shoving past them,
"let's get outta here!" He mounted to the ship's hatch.

The two men followed him and the hatch folded shut, flush with the
sleek hull. Then, gravs humming, the black ship lifted from the field.

It dwindled rapidly into the upper darkness.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Machine That Floats, by Joe Gibson

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49693 ***